Chronique:Canon Fodder - Decennial Delights
Issue 157
By Alex Wakeford
Happy tenth anniversary, Canon Fodder!
Join us for the celebrations as we look back at the last ten years of this feature, break down the story of our latest Waypoint Chronicle, answer some community lore questions, and get ready for the Canon Fodder LIVE panel at the 2024 Halo World Championship in a few short weeks.
TEN YEARS OF CANON FODDER[modifier]
On September 24, 2014, Issue 001 of Canon Fodder released, titled “Feet First.”
How strange it is to look back at such a time a decade on. MCC, Halo 2: Anniversary, Broken Circle, and the Halo 5 beta were still on the horizon, the Forerunner Saga and Kilo-5 Trilogy had come to an end, and the concluding part of Halo: Escalation’s “The Next 72 Hours” arc released on this day. I was myself just starting my second year of university with absolutely no notion in my mind that I would end up writing this feature in the future!
As we ruminate upon the storied history of Canon Fodder, it may please you to know that Jeff Easterling was kidnapped by ONI agents in the night and politely asked to share some words with you all. Over to you, Jeff!
Ten years?! Wait, am I old now?
Over the past decade, Canon Fodder's scope has evolved and adjusted as new fiction would reveal itself through games, novels, reference guides, data drops, item descriptions, map locations, and the occasional loot crate. All along the way, Canon Fodder has helped tell the story of our stories through analysis, reveals, interviews, art, subtle hints, and pun-laden blog titles.
Milestones like these are ones that instantly elicit feelings of gratitude. They can never be possible without the combined efforts and dedication of so many marvelous and hard-working teams and individuals—including your current penman Mr. Wakeford, who continues to evolve and elevate the craft with each new installment. From the very beginning, it’s been an infinite honor to partner with every single contributor to help supply canon-connected content for fiction fans to dissect and discuss.
And speaking of fiction fans, you’re the ones we have to thank most of all. Your continued readership and passion are what help keep features like this running stronger than ever, so if you’re one of those that considers yourself an enjoyer of such lore-leaning things, make sure you give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back for the irreplaceable role you continue to play in its existence.
Here’s to another canon-curious decade.
Until next time… Live well, play Halo, and be what you dare.
THE MACHINE BREAKS[modifier]
In celebration of Canon Fodder’s tenth birthday, we released a new Waypoint Chronicle earlier this month which follows the unique perspective of a Promethean Knight.
Halo: The Machine Breaks can be read here on Halo Waypoint, downloaded as a free PDF, or you can listen to it in audiobook format on YouTube.
“2558. As Jul ‘Mdama’s Covenant grows stronger through acquisition of powerful Forerunner technology, one malfunctioning Promethean Knight discovers the last vestiges of its humanity.”
THE MACHINE BREAKDOWN[modifier]
Over the years, Canon Fodder has been one of the venues through which we’ve been able to address issues like inconsistencies, story gaps, or other such deliberations (and in a franchise that is pushing a quarter-of-a-century spanning multiple generations and countless creative teams, such things are indeed inevitable!)
The Machine Breaks gave us a fun opportunity to hit all of the above, but through storytelling rather than something more curative.
PECULIAR PANELS
Some folks out there have already caught that one part of this story is directly adapted from the comic series Halo: Escalation, specifically Issue #15 where there is a rather peculiar oddity.
In these panels, we see Jul ‘Mdama conversing with a Zealot clad in white armor that is clearly based on the Halo: Reach harness, but in the following panels it is a red-armored Zealot that we encounter throughout Halo 4 and Halo 5. And then, in the final panel, we see the Promethean Knight attack the Zealot, saving Spartan Hoya’s life—something that receives no further attention.
The solution for the mysterious case of the armor-switching Zealot is simple, of course: there are two Zealots present. Mr. Holmes will not be leaving Baker Street to investigate that simple clarification.
But the Promethean Knight suddenly attacking the Zealot? Well, that’s another matter—there's a story to be had there. And without any other context, that was perfect fodder for us to delve into unexplored territory and follow events directly from a Promethean’s perspective.
PROMETHEAN PREHISTORY
The Prometheans made their debut in Halo 4 as a new enemy faction that the Master Chief would battle on Requiem. Can you believe that was almost twelve years ago now? How time flies...
We learned in Halo 4 and Halo: Silentium that the Promethean Knights were created by the Didact through the use of the Composer, a mind transfer device which can transform the brain into data and store it in a digital receptacle.
The device was first used on Warrior-Servants loyal to the Didact. While these saw some initial victories against the ever-encroaching threat of the Flood, the Didact recognized that he needed far greater numbers if he had any hope of driving the parasite back.
When the last remnants of the ecumene’s remaining commanders convened a meeting at the senescent Ark, preparing to fire Omega Halo on the Large Magellanic Cloud where a nexus of reawakened star roads were approaching our galaxy, the Didact took the opportunity to use the Composer on the ring installation’s devolved human population. In moments, he acquired two million victim essences, but provoked the rage of the Librarian who followed her husband back to his shield world Requiem.
Once there, the Librarian discovered the true extent of the Didact’s plan. With the aid of Endurance-of-Will, the last Warrior-Servant present who had not yet submitted herself to the Composer, the Librarian imprisoned her husband within a Cryptum where she hoped his mind would heal after a long sojourn in the Domain—that he would emerge healed and serve as humanity’s teacher and champion on their path to inheriting the Mantle.
Sadly, this was not to be. The firing of the Halo Array burned through the Domain as well, severely damaging it, which left the Didact to consciously stew in a hundred millennia of madness. Upon guiding the Master Chief and Cortana to awaken him, he resumed his campaign to imprison humanity, who had themselves emerged from the throes of the Covenant War not just as survivors, but arrogant victors.
After departing Requiem, the Didact first went to Ivanoff Station by Gamma Halo to recover the Composer (which he unleashed upon the station), then went to Earth where he fired the device on New Phoenix, sublimating its population of seven million souls. Some were sent through slipspace back to Requiem’s forges while others languished in a tortured, limbo-like state within the Composer’s Abyss or in the Domain’s barren anterior.
From these events, there are three different “sources” of Prometheans:
- Units derived from the Didact’s loyal Warrior-Servants who willingly submitted themselves to the Composer. These are limited in number and have retained a greater, more stable form of individuality, as seen in Halo 5’s Warzone with the likes of Animus, Lochagos, Malice, Rive, Sever, Ortus, and others.
- Units derived from the victim essences of the two million preindustrial humans on Omega Halo which served as more common and numerous thrall units.
- Units derived from the victim essences of Ivanoff Station's personnel and the seven million 26th century citizens of New Phoenix, Earth.
It is the latter that ultimately proved to be troublesome. The Composer was technology that the Forerunners never fully understood in the first place, and as Dr. Halsey speculates in her journal entry in the story, sufficiently complex minds gathered unwillingly may possess the capacity to rebel. This is something she compares to her own considerations for the SPARTAN-II program, as she said in Halo 4:
“Childrens’ minds are more easily accepting of indoctrination, their bodies more adaptable to augmentation.”
The result? Mass-produced super-soldiers, human souls trapped within armor, created through morally dire means in a desperate attempt to save their respective species.
People as military hardware.
Soldiers as machines.
THE STRATEGOS
“Didact, if the Composer is our final hope against the Flood, no Promethean would resist.”
A fellow Promethean who served alongside the Confirmer and the Didact, the Strategos was renowned as a great general, mentor, and strategist in the annals of the Warrior-Servant rate’s history.
After the Didact’s original exile by order of the Master Builder, the Strategos managed to evade attempts to convert him to Builder Security and remained staunchly loyal to the Warrior-Servant rate. Upon learning of the Ur-Didact’s return after his traumatic encounter with the Gravemind, the Strategos convened with his old pupil as he sought alternate solutions to the Flood.
The Strategos was present to witness and guide the Didact’s failed mutation, resulting in his suggestion that the Composer was the last hope remaining to them.
The Strategos willingly submitted himself to the Composer and his essence became the central command pattern that served as the battlenet conductor for all Promethean units due to his many millennia of accumulated combat-wisdom. His command pattern was also capable of inhabiting specialized Promethean units known to the UNSC as “Knight Strategos” which were observed and recorded for implementation in War Games simulations.
THE RUEFUL FATE OF DR. SANDRA TILLSON
The unique opportunity afforded by this story that’s not been done before was to explore the perspective of a Promethean Knight—the cold and clinical nature of its existence as a war machine juxtaposed against the human soul imprisoned within it.
This is something that a player might get a sense of listening to the music of Halo 4, such as “Aliens” and “Pylons.” The ethereal choral aspect of these tracks are distorted by electronic textures, a synthetic filter that might be thought of as representative of the souls trapped within an alloy of metal and madness.
Naturally, to explore this in the story, a 26th century human essence manifesting delusions of its past like a phantom limb led us to a very specific individual.
To have it be Random New Phoenix Citizen #3791 just didn’t land the emotional punch as a reading experience, and another Ivanoff scientist simply begged the question... well, why not simply use Dr. Tillson, who we have an existing emotional connection to? She simply made too much sense on that front—in a similar fashion to how Jenkins gave us deeper insight into the titular parasite in Halo: The Flood.
In Tillson’s very brief appearance in the Master Chief’s journey, it was through her “death” that we saw the true horror of the Composer, and it is through her “afterlife” that we now see the tortured existence of a Promethean Knight.
CANON FODDER LIVE 2024[modifier]
The 2024 Halo World Championship event is coming up once again and we’ll be there to bring some fanciful fiction to the festivities!
We’ll be having an extended conversation about the fiction we’ve released this year and give you some teasers as we take a closer look at some elements of our next novel, Halo: Empty Throne.
You can still acquire General Admission tickets to the event and see the Community Stage in person, but if you’re intending to enjoy the show from the comfort of your home then be sure to tune in here on October 4.
COMMUNITY QUERIES[modifier]
You asked and we answered.
Drof497: What were Despondent Pyre's motivations for masking the approach of the UNSC Infinity (and the Banished, if that is the case) from Cortana?
As we have seen with the likes of 343 Guilty Spark and 031 Exuberant Witness, monitors are fiercely protective of their installations and do not take kindly to other constructs assuming direct control over their systems and secrets—particularly when the secrets held within Zeta Halo could potentially lead to the undoing of all the Forerunners’ carefully laid plans for humanity.
SkedPhoenix: Why did the Prophet of Truth have such a small fleet during the battle of the Ark?
This is a point which is actually raised by the Prophet of Truth himself in Halo 3 when the player encounters the Scarab during the mission The Ark. A holographic sermon conveys the following message:
“I opened the portal to this hallowed place, this shelter from Halo's fire, in the hopes that more of our Covenant would follow. Alas, save for a rabble of heretics and their Demon allies, we are all that made the passage. Thus, we must temper joy with sorrow. Keep in our hearts those left behind.”
As for why this is the case, there are a myriad of contributing factors. The Great Schism and the fall of High Charity were events of towering significance which upended the Covenant to its very foundations, along with the catastrophic losses that the Prophet of Truth’s fleet suffered in the aftermath of Operation: FIRST STRIKE.
It should be noted that the Sangheili had commanded the Covenant military for many millennia, and while the changing of the guard saw a swift alteration to the status quo and the center of events within the holy city and on Delta Halo, the Covenant empire was vast. Coordination of large-scale changes to an empire and the mobilization (and transit) of fleets scattered across space requires time, even with carefully laid planning, and there was only a matter of a few short weeks between the Great Schism and Truth activating the portal on Earth.
ARMORY INFINITUM[modifier]
Where the energy sword is seen by many as a symbol of Sangheili martial prowess and the mark of an honorable warrior, the bloodblade is more specifically seen as a symbol of fear.
Wielded by assassins and special operatives, most notably the Silent Shadow, the Master Chief had a particularly close encounter with this terrifying weapon when confronting Jega ‘Rdomnai within the House of Reckoning.
An acrid breeze blew through a dead forest, the trees blackened by bombing runs and plasma fire. As Zeta Halo slowly rotated and the nearest star began to dip below the far containment wall that made up the ring band's edge, what passed for dusk began to settle across the fractured landscape. Amidst a backdrop of charred bark and broken limbs, the subtle shift of black armor was the only evidence of Jega 'Rdomnai's presence.
The cybernetically enhanced Sangheili warrior waited patiently in the shadows, anticipating the arrival of a group of UNSC Marines designated Boulder Squad. 'Rdomnai had observed and catalogued the group's patterns and patrol routes for several cycles, and the time drew near for him to make his move.
'Rdomnai gave a quick but choreographed sweep over his weaponry to make sure all was in peak operating order. In the relative stillness of the moment, he allowed his focus to deviate just slightly towards wistful recollection. His left cybernetic arm housed the reforged remnants of his old personal energy sword—an intimidating, custom-shaped, twin-blade monstrosity named Ghostpierce.
In his right hand, he slowly turned over the hilt of his most recent weapon of choice, a more traditional Sangheili bloodblade that itself had already claimed more victims than he could count. The crimson-hued energy sword remained nameless, but 'Rdomnai subconsciously vowed to bestow upon it a new monicker when their job was finally done on this ring. Something befitting of such a monumental victory.
Something befitting the death of a demon.
Nearly an hour passed before the first sounds of the encroaching Marines could be heard. Soon, Boulder Squad was in sight. As the squad crept closer, every step became a silent countdown to mark each human soldier's end. Low voices turned from casual communication to concern and confusion as multiple red energy blades ignited just inside the tree line, the forest suddenly a charcoal painting come to life, giving birth to a monster made of metal and mandibles.
The screams lasted longer than the frantic gunfire, a still silence welcoming Boulder into its eternal embrace. A moment later, the red glow of the blades disappeared, and Jega 'Rdomnai became shadow once more.
AS STUBBORN AS YOU ARE[modifier]
You may have noticed that the cover art for this issue is a hitherto unreleased piece of Halo 4 concept art. Illustrated by John Wallin Liberto, we thought that this was simply too cool to not do a little something extra for. It is our tenth birthday, after all!
For one hundred millennia, the command-pattern of the Strategos had lain dormant. Automated processes had taken over, directing Promethean forces to conduct routine patrol and reconnaissance cycles throughout Shield World 0001 before returning the units to their crèches. Requiem had slumbered, sealed in silent stasis, awaiting a time that it might awaken.
That day has finally come.
Aya.
The Librarian’s plan for the galaxy has succeeded, as humans and other species that were young during the time of the ecumene travel the stars once more—several of their ships having been drawn into Requiem’s maw.
One human in particular has drawn the attention of the Strategos command-pattern. Adorned in primitive combat skin, it is he who has released the Didact from his long exile. This human is now cutting a swath through the deep jungles of Requiem, seeking to rendezvous with the other humans’ crashed vessel. The Strategos is eager to collect combat data for this new age and has thus far dedicated several cycles to examining the materials, weaponry, and equipment of these interlopers, who are evidently still progressing towards becoming a true interstellar civilization.
The Strategos directs additional Knight units to engage the armored human warrior, seeking to gain more direct insight into the capabilities and valor of this new age.
Time will soon tell whether Requiem had found an adversary worthy of its legend.
FLASHPOINT[modifier]
Halo: Flashpoint is a new tactical miniatures game from Mantic Games which is due to be released later this year.
Mantic have been uploading some awesome demos of the game to give folks a closer look at the figures, rules, and modes you will be playing with. Be sure to check out their latest previews!
Choose whether to fight as Spartans or the Banished and prepare for the ultimate tactical tabletop experience.
As a note: pre-orders from Mantic are currently totally sold out, but keep an eye out to see if new stock is available and be sure to check your local store!
COMMUNITY LORE CORNER[modifier]
It’s not just about the stories and lore that we create internally, but the ways in which it’s interpreted, recreated, and shared by the community. Every month, we get to feature an awesome selection of community-made videos about Halo’s lore that have been made with knowledge and a whole lot of love.
To begin with something quite different, Rohan Thomas has created (heh!) an amazing Halo tribute video to Cortana’s character arc through the series.
JumperScape returns with an audio adaptation of the Precipice story shard we released last year, detailing the origins of the first Executor and High Auxiliary Sloan’s FIREWALL contingency in the wake of Cortana’s demise. Boasting incredible voice talent and audio production quality, JumperScape have done a linear version and an hour-long “choose your own adventure” version.
The fall of Reach was the most devastating loss for the UNSC during the War of Annihilation, and Katarn343 has put together a three-hour war documentary-style video breaking down the entire event.
Spartans, where would humanity be without ‘em? (Perhaps on more of a moral high ground... made of lechatelierite.)
Pancreas NoWork recently released a video exploring each generation of the UNSC’s ultimate super-soldiers, from the origins of ORION to the contemporary Spartan-IVs.
It may surprise you to know that HiddenXperia has recently done a video about the Flood, taking a look at every known Flood form.
MegMage’s journey through the Halo games finally brought her to the end of Halo 5 just a few weeks ago.
Lucyjrobyn is a series newcomer who is currently playing through Halo: Combat Evolved, taking her first steps on this great journey. If you wish to vicariously feel that sense of rediscovery, of seeing this series for the first time through fresh eyes, check out her channel!
It is in the nature of science fiction as a genre to feature a lot of overlapping elements and inspiration, and Installation00 has taken that particular lens to examine some of the similarities between the Halo and Mass Effect universes. “I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite video on YouTube!”
Covenant Canon has once again endeavored to provide us with canon concerning the Covenant, this time detailing Merg Vol and his faction featured in Halo: Spartan Assault.
That’s a wrap for this issue. Whether you’re just joining us now, have joined recently, or been following along over the last decade of Canon Fodder releases, thank you for your readership. We love getting to explore the Halo universe with this blog feature and we look forward to continuing to do so in the months and years to come.
And hey, Canon Fodder isn’t the only thing with a milestone birthday this month. Halo 3: ODST will be fifteen years old on September 22, so we should probably release another one of them newfangled Waypoint Chronicles for that, perhaps?