Iris

"'Iris' is a spiral campaign designed to take gamers on an incredible journey through the Halo Universe," a spokesperson for Microsoft said. "Led by an 'unknown' hand, users will discover bits of previously unknown information about the Halos, the Flood, the Forerunners, and the true origins behind the Halo trilogy."

It's designed to give people more information on how the great conflict all began, as we build up to the climactic conclusion of the series on 25 September.

Bungie content chap Frank "Frankie" O'Connor has written most of the material, with help from community manager Brian Jarrard and artist Aaron LeMay.

The campaign's due to run for several weeks throughout the summer and is promised to be a compelling experience to uncover valuable information. Unfortunately Microsoft won't say whether there will be any other rewards for participating.

History of Events in the "Iris" Viral Marketing Campaign for Halo 3

(Information taken from ARGS.Bungie.org

June 11, 2007

At 10:26 AM PST on June 11, 2007, a mysterious message appeared in the Halo 3 forum on Bungie.net with a subject line entitled, "System Integrity Confirmed." The thread was created by a user named AdjutantReflex, whose system security role is "CompoundIntelligence."

http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=11263399 - AdjutantReflex's first Bungie.net thread, titled "System Integrity Confirmed"

AdjutantReflex's text is gold.

In response to a post wondering if this was the work of a hacker, AdjutantReflex confirmed that it entered Bungie's systems "by force," but stated that it was irrelevant because there was no hostile intent.

AdjutantReflex edited the first reply by another user, showing a system ability to edit other posts.

After exactly 100 excited and confused replies from forumgoers, AdjutantReflex locked and stickied the thread, showing that it has other moderator powers as well. The thread was open for about two hours.

AdjutantReflex then moved to http://www.halo.bungie.org, posting a similar series of mysterious writings in the halo.bungie.org (HBO) forum.

http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl?read=808840 - AdjutantReflex's HBO thread, titled "System Integrity Confirmed"

Beware of Imposters

The same day that the original AdjutantReflex posts were created, a regular forum user created an account named "AdjutantRefIex" with a "capital eye" instead of a "lower-case ell" in the word "Reflex." That user attempted to make more mysterious posts, although the style of writing was inferior and distinctly different from the original and real AdjutantReflex's.

Forum Ninja "just another fan" banned the imposter.

Shortly thereafter, another account was created on Bungie.net entitled "ReticentAxiom". This user began creating posts nearly identical to the fake AdjutantRefIex, pretending to be another AI. Once again, they are recognizable by lack of gold text and inferior writing style -- not to mention a distinctly different "style" and "feel" to the posts from the originals.

The best advice follows: don't believe it if it's not in gold text.

June 12, 2007

At exactly 11:00 AM PST, AdjutantReflex created another thread entitled "Archive/Resource Estimate," with its first post stating that "Archives/Resources will be compiled in approximately 38 hours [1:00 AM PST on Thursday, July 14]." Another several posts followed, but no further substantive information was gleaned.

http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=11278044 - AdjutantReflex's second bungie.net thread, titled "Archive/Resource Estimate"

June 13, 2007

At 3:43 PST, AdjutantReflex posted an addendum to his locked thread entitiled "Archive/Resource Estimate" with the text "Tick Tock."

June 14, 2007

In the hours counting down to the 1 AM PST deadline there were two other posts by AR.

Shortly after 1 AM PST, an email was sent to all recipients of the Xbox Flash newsletter with a cryptic poem inside. It was titled "Look for the signs, Keepers of the Flame".

(The Forerunner Email image)

Forerunner glyphs were noticed, not only inside the email (seen above), but also on Master Cheif's visor at Halo3.com (seen below).

The third glyph found is AdjutantReflex's new avatar on Bungie.net.

(AdjutantReflex's new bungie.net avatar)

The fourth glyph found on the last page of www.halo3.com/comic.

(Strip Three of the last page (Page 4) of The Cradle of Life)

The fifth was found on a website connected to the IP address found in the Halo3.com comic strip. The last digit is a 3 instead of a 5. http://206.16.223.63/

The sixth was found in a newspaper ad to debut in the US on Sunday, June 17th.

On June 14, 2007 at 3:43 PM PST AdjutantReflex began another thread at Bungie.net entitled, "Who?" with one other post following before going back into hibernation. This posting corresponded to a change at halo3.com where the main page had been turned into five darkened pictures labled Servers #1-5. All five servers were locked at this time.

(halo3.com at the time of Servers #1-5 being locked)

http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=11314735 - AdjutantReflex's third bungie.net thread, titled "Who?"

Another section of halo3.com was uncovered (http://halo3.com/comic/) with an intriguing comic. Intrepid searchers discovered that the last page of this comic could be manipulated to give an IP address. "206.16.223.65" (Apparently all IP addresses listed 206.16.223.0 through 206.16.223.225 belong to Microsoft corp). (It should be noted that the timer that is (at the time of this edit) on the said site, is in the base 7 counting system).

Shortly after, the IP was manipulated (206.16.223.63) to lead us to a site associated with the (presumably fictional) organization entitled Society of the Ancients, or SOTA. A few minutes after this discovery a myspace page was discovered with references to this organization.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=1000322121

Not much is known about this page, or other myspace or facebook profiles at this time.

June 15, 2007

Members of the SOTA organization were spotted in Times Square in New York City wearing yellow shirts and holding picket signs with the glyph eblazoned on them. They were also handing out flyers.

(SOTA flyer)

(SOTA Membership Application [1])

Beware, email address above returns:

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

DoYouGrok@societyoftheancients.com

Technical details of permanent failure: PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 13): 550 relay not permitted

June 16, 2007

SOTA members were spotted in Vancouver, Canada and London, England, and many other places. More sightings and rumors seem to come by the hour.

June 17, 2007

Another new glyph seems to have been found in this image here. File:Possible glyph.jpg

AdjutantReflex posted again at bungie.net, this time with a quote from "Macbeth" and telling us it is being attacked somehow. And once more stating it would only be able to deflect assault for 22 hours, giving us a deadline around 10:06 AM PDT on June 18, 2007.

http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=11359444 - AdjutantReflex's fourth bungie.net thread, titled "Stop it."

June 18, 2007

AdjutantReflex posted on bungie.net again (it's fifth thread, titled "That Old Life"), telling that someone stronger than him was going to defeat him (the details were unclear as to whether this meant destroy or corrupt, or some other method). In the last sentence of the same post, AdjutantReflex said "I will seek one of you out and leave my legacy in a small space." Twenty-five minutes later AdjutantReflex replied to the thread saying "He has had millennia for reflection, but what image does he see?".

http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=11372502 - AdjutantReflex's fifth bungie.net thread, titled "That Old Life"

The countdown on the http://206.16.223.65 website sped up.

This is all that has happened so far in the "Iris" viral marketing campaign for Halo 3.