The Monument
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
- Spark: "The Monument?"
- 091 Adjutant Veridity: "The monitor spun in a circle, sending its light reflecting through the black crystals as they passed. "Why, yes! Do you approve? The civil war on this ring left us with an overabundance of essences and imprints." Veridity led them down another path, this one narrower than the wide avenue. "They were everywhere. Submonitors and custodians confined in damaged carapaces, roaming lost through the ring's networks, trapped in ruined power stations and facilities... Composed humans loosed from damaged storage devices, their digital imprints overflowing into support systems, their memories and emotions causing havoc. After the firing of the array, we spent the ensuing centuries gathering them, giving them a new home large enough for all, a safe place to rest. Billions of lives lost over countless millennia are stored here in crystal, taken from data, logs, imprints, fragments, events, research, experiments... all of them collected, catalogued, and archived. As instructed, we have kept watch. Our only deviation in course was to purify the atmosphere and end the shroud of mist over Halo."
- Spark: "Why did you do that?"
- 091 Adjutant Veridity: "To encourage the survival of the tullioc and other species. After careful study, we discovered that in feeding on the crystal, the creatures were absorbing some of the data stored here. There had been too much death, so we do not harm the tullioc, for in them now lies the memories of thousands."
- — Adjutant Veridity explains the Monument to Rion and Spark[1]
The Monument was the former core of Mendicant Bias on Installation 07 which was transformed into a home for the essences, imprints and damaged ancillas left over from the civil war on the ring. It was meant to both preserve them and to stand as a monument to the lives lost.
Description
The Monument was a giant structure made out of black crystal that acted as a giant memory storage device for the damaged ancillas, imprints and human essences left over from the civil war on Installation 07. The Librarian set the parameters after the Forerunners retook Zeta Halo, and it was created and kept watch over by the installation's ancillas at the directive of the Librarian and the IsoDidact. It was also the home of Zeta Halo's new Cartographer,[1][2] the original having been destroyed.[3]
History
- ^ a b Halo: Point of Light, chapter 15
- ^ Halo: Point of Light, chapter 16
- ^ Halo: Point of Light, chapter 13