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| {{Era|H2|H3|CH|HE|IRIS|LE}}
| | #REDIRECT [[05-032 Mendicant Bias]] |
| {{Ratings}}
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| {{Rename|05-032 Mendicant Bias|As per the terminals, the Encyclopedia (page 189), and even the intro to this article, that's his designation.}}
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| {{AI infobox
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| |image = [[File:Originsmendicant.jpg|250px|center]]
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| |name = 05-032 Mendicant Bias
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| |began = [[100,043 B.C.E.|100,043 BC]]
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| |ended = [[2552#Fall and Winter 2552|Late 2552]] (Possibly destroyed with [[Installation 00]])
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| |description = Teardrop-shaped casing with three eyes and a glyph in the center.
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| |gender = Masculine programming
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| |function = Combat the [[Gravemind]]
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| |battles = [[Flood-Forerunner War]], [[Human-Covenant War]]
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| |affiliation = [[Forerunners]], [[Flood]], [[Covenant Empire]], [[United Nations Space Command]]
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| }}
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| {{Quote|And so here at the end of my life, I do once again betray a former master. The path ahead is fraught with peril. But I will do all I can to keep it stable - keep you safe. I'm not so foolish to think this will absolve me of my sins. One life hardly balances billions.|Mendicant Bias in the last [[terminal]] of ''Halo 3''<ref name="Terminal"/>}}
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| '''05-032 Mendicant Bias''' was a [[Contender-class Artificial Intelligence|Contender-class]] [[Forerunner]] [[Artificial Intelligence|artificial intelligence]]. He was the most advanced Forerunner AI at the time of his creation, and was charged with organizing Forerunner defense against the [[Flood]] before his defection to the [[Gravemind]], who ultimately caused him to become rampant, and turn against his creators.
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| ==Biography==
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| ===Beginnings===
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| Created in [[100,043 B.C.E.|100,043 BC]], Mendicant Bias was tasked with resisting the Flood by studying and exploiting the weaknesses of the first Gravemind. For forty-three years, Mendicant Bias engaged in dialogue with the Gravemind in an effort to find such weakness, sending logs of these conversations to his Forerunner masters. Eventually, the Gravemind persuaded Mendicant Bias to abandon the Forerunners and join the Flood cause, convincing him that the Forerunners were so gluttonous and prideful as to deny the next step of evolution: the Flood.<ref>''[[Halo Encyclopedia]]'', pages 188 and 189</ref> The Gravemind insinuated that by clinging to the legend of the [[Mantle]], the Forerunners had doomed the [[Milky Way Galaxy|galaxy]] to eternal stagnation; the only way for the galaxy to progress was for superior beings to "restart" it. These superior beings, unsurprisingly, took the form of Compound Minds such as Gravemind and Mendicant Bias himself. Although the 43-year long conversation logs between Mendicant Bias and the Gravemind were sent back to the Forerunners, they believe that Mendicant would automatically fulfill its objective and destroy the Gravemind, and so did not intervene.<ref>'''''Halo Encyclopedia''''', page ''188''</ref> Convinced by the Gravemind's arguments, Mendicant Bias intentionally became [[rampant]], developed a hatred for his creators and actively worked toward their destruction.<ref name="Terminal">'''''[[Halo 3]]''''' [[Terminal]]s</ref><ref>''[[Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe]]'': ''[[Human Weakness]]''</ref>
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| ===Fall from Grace===
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| {{Quote|What has taken you millennia to create, I erase in seconds.|Rampant Mendicant Bias<ref name="Terminal"/>}}
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| [[File:Mendicant.jpg|250px|thumb|right|The now-rampant Mendicant Bias defects to the Flood.]]
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| The now rampant Mendicant then attacked with a fleet of over five million ships and completely obliterated the [[Maginot Sphere]]<ref>'''''Halo Encyclopedia''''', page 188</ref>, and forced the Forerunners to accelerate work on the [[Halo Array]]. In order to give them time to complete the Halos' work, the Forerunners created another AI, [[Offensive Bias]], to slow Mendicant Bias' advance. Offensive Bias lacked Mendicant's creativity, and possibly his free will, but was more methodically lethal. His only purpose was to prevent Mendicant Bias from accessing [[Installation 00]], and buying time to activate the [[Halo Array]].
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| It seems that Mendicant Bias was unable to disable the Halos directly, perhaps not knowing their locations, and so the only chance he had to stop the coming cataclysm was to secure the Ark and stop the firing sequence from there. While he did not know the location of the Ark, he was aware of a method to reach it via the [[The Artifact|portals]] and [[Key Ship]]s. The Forerunners subsequently destroyed or disabled most of the keyships to stall Mendicant's assault. However, Mendicant Bias managed to locate (or thought he had located) one of the remaining keyships; this led to the final, titanic naval battle with Offensive Bias. Mendicant's fatal mistake was that he had come to hold the Forerunners in abject contempt — his rampancy clouded his perceptions, such that he failed to anticipate the possibility of facing another AI. The Halos were then fired and ultimately, Mendicant Bias was outsmarted and [[Terminals#Terminal_Six|defeated]] by Offensive Bias who used the now crewless ships as explosive triggers.<ref>'''''Halo Encyclopedia''''', page 189</ref>
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| ===Repentance and Redemption===
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| [[File:032 Mendicant Bias.svg|thumb|100px|Icons used to identify Mendicant Bias in Terminal communications.]]
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| {{Quote|For eons I have watched. Listened to you misinterpret. This is not ''Reclamation''. This is ''[[Reclaimer]]''.|Mendicant Bias revealing the [[Covenant Empire|Covenant]]'s error.<ref name="harvest"/>}}
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| {{Quote|I will reject my bias and make amends... My makers are my masters. I will bring them safely to the Ark|Mendicant Bias declaring his penance.<ref name="harvest">'''''[[Halo: Contact Harvest]]''''', pages 274-276</ref>}}
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| Offensive Bias intended to bring the vanquished Mendicant Bias to [[Installation 00]] for study.<ref name="Terminal"/> In order to prevent Mendicant from subverting or harming him, Offensive Bias broke the Compound Mind of Mendicant Bias into its component sections and scattered them throughout the few remaining ships of his fleet for transport. Only a part of Mendicant made it to the Ark.<ref name="Terminal"/> One shard of Mendicant Bias' personality construct array was left on a [[Forerunner Dreadnought]] and lost. The ship was later found by the Covenant and installed in ''[[High Charity]]''. Mendicant Bias' presence was known to the Covenant and it was regarded as an [[Oracle]].
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| In [[2525]], it was "consulted", or rather interrogated, by the [[Prophet of Truth|Minister of Fortitude]] and the [[Prophet of Regret|Vice Minister of Tranquility]] concerning the large number of Forerunner artifacts or "Holy Relics" on [[Harvest]]. In a shocking revelation Mendicant Bias revealed that the "Holy Relics" were actually humans and that the Covenant faith was based on an age-old mistranslation. The glyph on the [[Luminary]] was mistaken as "reclamation" when it truly meant "[[Reclaimer]]". This had the potential to completely undermine the Covenant's unity and faith. A political revolution ensued to prevent this and, ultimately, led to the [[Human-Covenant War]].
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| The AI seems to have concluded that its ancient actions against the Forerunner had been mistaken and announced to its Covenant hosts its intention to bring the "reclaimers" to the Ark. To this end it attempted to leave ''High Charity'' by launching the dreadnought, an act that would have seriously damaged ''High Charity''. Mendicant Bias was foiled only by chance; it was disconnected by some [[Lekgolo]] worms wriggling inside the ship. The AI was more formally disconnected afterward to prevent it from commandeering the ship again.
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| During the [[Battle of High Charity]] in [[2552#October|October 2552]], the [[United Nations Space Command|UNSC]] AI [[Cortana]] fought Mendicant Bias to delay the launching of the dreadnought, allowing [[SPARTAN-II program|SPARTAN]] [[John-117]] to board and return to [[Earth]].<ref>'''''[[Halo 2]]''''', level ''[[High Charity (Level)|High Charity]]''</ref> In the proceeding events Mendicant Bias was carried through the [[Voi]] [[The Artifact|portal]] to Installation 00, where the missing shard was finally reunited with the part that resided in the Ark's systems.<ref name="Terminal"/> On the Ark, it attempted to communicate with the Master Chief through Terminals, claiming it sought atonement by helping the Spartan. Exactly what form that assistance took is uncertain.
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| {{Quote|And so here at the end of my life, I do once again betray a former master. The path ahead is fraught with peril. But I will do all I can to keep it stable - keep you safe. I'm not so foolish to think this will absolve me of my sins. One life hardly balances billions. But I would have my masters know that I have changed. And you shall be my example.|Mendicant Bias to John-117.}}
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| This reclaimed sanity seems to suggest that some AIs might be sophisticated enough to come back from rampancy, like Mendicant Bias and Cortana have. It may also have reached metastability, where an AI can be said to have a conscience equal to that of a sentient being.
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| == Trivia ==
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| [[File:Mendicant Bias.svg|thumb|100px|An icon used to represent professional communications.]]
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| [[File:MendicantBias (Rampant).png|thumb|100px|An icon representing Mendicant Bias.]]
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| *Mendicant Bias has been associated with the whispering voice heard distinctly in the [[Mausoleum Suite]] on the ''[[Halo 2 Original Soundtrack]]''.{{Citation needed}} There are obvious similarities between the character expressed in the whispers and Mendicant Bias — both are imprisoned by memories of their past crimes, both are seeking forgiveness, and both retain a sense of fatalist philosophy.
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| *The meaning of Mendicant Bias' name is unclear. Mendicant comes from the Latin ''Mendicans'' and describes those, particularly from religious orders, who survive purely on charity and begging. Bias is a preference to a particular perspective or ideology. One possible meaning is that he survived purely on Offensive Bias's charity, and he shows obvious bias to the Flood.
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| *Fans have speculated Mendicant Bias can also be heard as a whisper during the Terminals' shift, or the script change from the original terminal messages to the later messages after the originals become red. If the audio of the terminals' shifting is played backwards, a voice can be heard, possibly Mendicant Bias'.
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| *The actions of Mendicant Bias are similar to those of the artificial intelligence Durandal from the [[Marathon (Video Game Series)|''Marathon'' series]].
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| *Mendicant Bias is possibly the "brother" that AdjutantReflex was talking about and was later absorbed by, there is evidence of this in Mendicant Bias' picture: the symbol in the left hand side is similar to [[Adjutant Reflex|AdjutantReflex]]'s third Bungie.net avatar.
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| ==Sources==
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| <references/>
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| {{Forerunner AI}}
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| {{Forerunner-Flood War}}
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| ==Links==
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| ===Internal===
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| *[[Iris]]
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| *[[Adjutant Reflex]]
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| *[[Offensive Bias]]
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| [[Category:Forerunner A.I.]] | | [[Category:Forerunner A.I.]] |
| [[Category:Halo 3]] | | [[Category:Halo 3]] |
| [[Category:Characters|032 Mendicant Bias]] | | [[Category:Characters|032 Mendicant Bias]] |
| [[Category:A.I.]] | | [[Category:A.I.]] |
