Editing The Anatomy of Halo

{{Status|RealWorld}}

 

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Created by the [[Forerunners]] over [[97,445 BCE|100,000 years ago]], Halo was designed to be a wide-effect, neural-disruption weapon capable of destroying any [[Sentience|sentient life]] which might perpetuate the [[Flood|Flood Parasites’]] existence. But this wasn’t Halo’s sole function. The enormous Ring-world was also a structure ten thousand kilometers in diameter engineered to support life on its interior surface. This part of Halo’s architecture is believed to be of roughly the same constitution of a typical [[Wikipedia:Gravitation|One-G]] planet, with large geographic formations and enormous bodies of water. All of this contained within a climate-controlled bed of atmosphere roughly 318 kilometers from one edge to the other. While intel suggests that the seven Halo Installations representing the array each have their own distinctive environment conditions, the two best-documented installations, [[Alpha Halo|04]] and [[Delta Halo|05]], offered a large assortment of [[Forerunner fauna and flora|flora and fauna]] across their surface. Towering mountain ranges, enormous canyons, and vast swaths of desert terrain occupied their interiors, comprised of a rich intermingling of ecosystems. To the untrained eye the facade of these ring-worlds looks no different than that of many life sustaining planets. Unsurprisingly, given their origin, the surface of a Halo ring-world is littered with Forerunner structures and technology: [[Beacon tower|enormous beacons]], [[Barrier tower|soaring spires]], and [[Library|immense complexes]]. Still, for the most part, these individual structures’ overarching purpose and mechanism remain a mystery. And underneath Halo’s outer strata exists a honeycomb labyrinth of interior structures, interconnected by [[Energy bridge|bridges]] made of [[hard light]], complex tunnel systems, and a vast [[teleportation grid]]. The surface of Halo is no small marvel: its majestic architecture, its natural composition, and its sheer size offers only a hint at the Forerunners’ [[Technological Achievement Tiers|technological mastery.]]

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Deep within Halo, and protected by immense chasms and heavily fortified walls, is the enormous research facility known as “The Library”. As with other locations on Halo, the Library’s interior is a catacomb, a series of corridors and tunnels extending outward from a [[Index chamber|centralized hub]]. Outside the structure a vast [[Anti-gravity gondola|gondola system]] interconnects a [[Containment shield|heavily]] [[Quarantine zone (location)|guarded]] [[Sentinel Wall|perimeter]], while inside, a series of [[elevator]]s gives those who enter it access to every one of its many levels. These dense but clustered compartments distributed across the structure’s enormous frame allow the Library’s array of gliding [[sentinel]]s to maintain and secure the site with relative ease. Accessible through numerous [[Z-9930 Information Vector Console|terminals and peripheral systems]] are the facility’s archives, an immense data-base holding the Library’s numerous caches of information. This data ranges from the genetic sequencing of many species acquired throughout the galaxy to accounts of the [[Ecumene Council|Forerunner governance]] and their [[Forerunner-Flood war|centuries-long war against the Flood.]] As would be expected, knowledge on the parasite itself exists within the Library’s data-banks, though much of the actual research occurred within separate containment facilities buried deep within the ring. And at the apex of this structure is the facility’s most important mechanism: a key, known as the Activation Index. When reunited with the control room’s [[The Core|core]] by a [[Reclaimer]], a [[human]], the Halo ring would send a harmonic pulse throughout [[Milky Way|the galaxy]], triggering the other six rings and destroying all sentient life within range. As the Forerunners prepared to fire Halo 100,000 years ago, [[Lifeworker|they]] enacted [[Conservation Measure|an effort to save and catalogue as many sentient species as they could]], providing shelter for them on [[Installation 00|the Ark]] in the event of the Array’s activation. [[Reintroduction|The final stage of the conservation measure]] would result in these saved species eventually being returned to their to their own homeworlds: a single sweet note in what was otherwise a [[Dark time|dark]], and ultimately devastating reality. For this reason, the Library and its activation index were of great importance to the Forerunners’ plans, and they remain extraordinarily significant in the context of the array.

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While a Halo Installation is typically under the supervision of a single Monitor, or caretaker, the enormity of its process requires numerous automated drones. These machines are commonly referred to as Sentinels. Sentinel operations meet a wide variety of ends: whether it’s the repair of damaged structures, the mining and retrieval of raw material, or most importantly, the containment of the Flood parasite during an outbreak. For this reason, the design and size of Sentinels varies as well: from the small, flitting [[Constructor]]s to the heavily-armored [[Enforcer]]s, and even larger [[Retriever Sentinel|Retrievers]], gigantic strato-sentinels which strip-mine resources sites for the rings’ construction. Held aloft by an [[anti-gravity]] system which makes the buildings mobile, large Sentinel production factories hover high above a ring’s surface, safe from the Flood. Though [[Sentinel manufacturing facility|Sentinel assemblage facilities]] do not have the same significance as other sites on the Halo Installations, their relative importance in the event of a Flood outbreak can not be ignored. Records indicate that during [[Battle of Installation 05|combat on Installation 05,]] also known as “Delta Halo”, the Flood targeted the Sentinel factory, using [[Zurdo-pattern Wraith|captured Covenant weapons]] to bring it down. [[Battle of the Quarantine Zone|This event]] served as a sobering reminder of the necessity of sentinels to maintain a Flood outbreak, as well as the insidious and intelligent nature of the parasite itself.

 

Prior to the firing of the Halo Array, dormant specimens of the Flood were captured and contained for research as per [[Containment Protocol|Forerunner protocol]]. The Forerunners recognized that because the origins of the Flood was mysterious and elusive, it was entirely possible that the parasite might one day resurface in the Milky Way Galaxy. So rather than simply fire the Halo Array, they took the risk of securing specimens and keeping them dormant in containment facilities buried deep within the Halo rings themselves, their hope that one day a cure could be discovered and the Flood’s threat nullified. These containment facilities may vary per ring, but all incorporate numerous safety mechanisms and security systems to ensure that they are not easily unlocked. Accessible through a bunker-like aperture and by way of a deep elevator shaft, the Flood containment facilities were further hidden behind many locked [[door]]s and many advanced security protocols. There, the Forerunners could observe individual specimens of the Flood, captured during the course of the war and held in suspended animation, as well as studying them [[Cold Storage|within environment generated by the parasite]]. Some [[Flood research facility|research sites]] were even held high above the ring’s surface, [[Lockout|locked out]] in a remote and inhospitable environment, like the clefts of a frigid mountain side. With foresight that even ''these'' advanced precaution could be compromised, the Forerunners established and distributed a litany of alternative restraint systems designed to limit the Flood’s movement across the ring. A series of [[Sentinel Wall|large defensive walls]] and immense chasms would divide the surface of Halo, the latter typically only traversable through the activation of a hard-light bridge, and, by Forerunner design, the [[Weather spire|local weather systems]] would aggressively batter the contaminated portions of the installation with frigid and inclement weather in an effort to slow the parasite’s collective growth. In the end, despite all of these efforts, the Flood would still escape. Containment on both Installation 04 and Installation 05 would fail, and the Flood would once again threaten the galaxy, halted only by the [[Jacob Keyes|sacrifice]] [[Miranda Keyes|of]] [[Avery Johnson|a]] [[Thel 'Vadam|brave]] [[John-117|few]].

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This video describes the function, architecture, and operation of the Control Room.