The Anatomy of Halo: Difference between revisions

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 [[Type-25 Assault Gun Carriage|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.

Easily the most important aspect of any given Halo installation, the Control Room is the location where the Halo Array is activated and fired. In order for this to occur, a Reclaimer, or human, must first acquire the Activation Index located in the Library facility, then reunify the index with the Control Center’s Core. Though both of these require the actions of a Reclaimer, the Index itself can easily be transported by any individual or artificial intelligence. Recognizing its vulnerability should the Flood ever escape, the Forerunners typically designed the Control Center to be an extravagant citadel, heavily fortified and well defended. Accessed by traversing a number of corridors and gates, the Control Room proper is generally a series of platforms focused on the holographic representation of the Installation and any nearby [[Threshold|planetary]] [[Substance|bodies]]. The Control Center is visually the most impressive of Halo’s facilities, tapping into the looming, angular qualities of Forerunner design. But even there physical shape cannot compare with the latent power the Control Room contains.  At the center of this room is usually a pedestal representing the Core, into which the index is inserted to activate Halo. Once reunification is achieved, the Ring prepares to amplify its neural disruption effect by way of three [[phase pulse generator]]s, allowing it to fire deep into space. Though their firing mechanisms can be tunned to specific ends, the Array’s individual rings are engineered to fire up to 25,000 light years in every direction, transmitting the pulse effect to other installations which initiate their mechanisms in response. The result: complete eradication of all sentient life within the galaxy, an act which was initiated only once, a hundred-thousand years ago. If the activation sequence is interrupted on any ring, a fail-safe mode is triggered and superluminally communicated  to all installations. When this occurs, the Halo Array’s fail-safe can only be reset or fired from one location: Installation 00, also known as the Ark. This very event took place after the Arbiter and [[Commander]] Miranda Keyes [[The Great Journey |prevented Delta Halo from firing]], [[Battle of Installation 00|forcing the struggle for Halo to the Ark]], where the Covenant and the Flood would finally meet their end.