Notes on this alternate universe…

This is an alternate universe that involves Halo. The characters are different—some of them even have different names. Others follow the same names as the cannon Halo-verse. But this however is not cannon. Most of it is built on speculation, and that is all it is.

I don’t own Halo, just my own speculations about it.

A little back-story for those reading. In the mid 2520s, Earth had colonized a few planets in the Orion Arm. This apparently put them at odds with a technologically superior, yet highly religious conglomeration known as the Covenant. Though, prior to this happening, Earth had seen many wars—including one involving the first wave of the Horrors. Like I said, this is an alternate universe. Earth managed to drive back the Horrors to their home plane with Technomancy. Unfortunately, human arrogance stepped in and horrible wars with the usage of Technomancy happened and the vast technology that was seen in the late 23rd and early 24th century was banned. Humanity took a step back technologically and created space-faring vessels without the aid of the Technomantic crystals that provided the FTL propulsion. Magic is still on Earth, though it too had been banned and only limited to the dragons that still are awake. And even that is limited. Dragons are only to use magic to shape shift into human form. Technomancy managed to get rid of the problems left by Goblinization, which is why people look very human in the 2500s. The time of Earth now is in the middle of the Sixth World. Many found that as they left Earth, the affects of Mana lessened. Bio-technology developed by the Utah Foundation was also banned—since it too had connections with Technomancy, but that did not stop the company from producing prosthetics. The Utah Foundation secretly still builds biosyntech and maintains biosyntech, though now the company’s main product is chemical drug enhancements. There have been rumors tough that state syntech is being sold and augmented on the black market in rather well funded underground facilities, but it can no longer do the things it was able to do in its prime years. One famous rumor on the Trans-planetary Matrix circling about in the Shadow-Nexus is that the SPARTAN program was fully funded by the Utah Foundation of Bio-Organic Research and that every SPARTAN created was augmented in some way with the syntech. John-117 can thank Kiryuu Knight for the upgrades, if you catch my drift. Still things did not change much and megacorps ran no only companies, but planets as well—that is until the United Nations stepped in. All the countries of Earth compiled together—alliances after alliances and are now being regulated and dictated by the United Nations council and its President Commander and Chief.

Though each planet of the UN has its own armies, the UN started placing regulations on what those armies could do and what they could not do. Government regulators finally stepped in on the megacorps and came down on companies like Saeder-Krupp, with no fear on whether or not Lofwyr likes it. Yes, in the 26th Century, the Wyrm still runs Saeder-Krupp, who is a huge help in building space ships on Reach. Though, thank God that because of Mana Lofwyr is Earthly bound. The Great Feathered Serpent Malcho, though has not given up on the practice of Technomancy, has focused his company Omak Technologies on non-Technomantic weapon manufacture—like the MAC-Gun—in order to keep it in business. But the UN regulations on the megacorps forced companies like Omak and Saeder-Krupp to pay enormous amounts of taxes on their goods—or build products for the United Nations Space Command. Malcho and Lofwyr had no choice but to agree to the terms. With companies like Saeder-Krupp building ships and companies like Omak building weapons, the UN could finally take hold of the chaos of its colonized planets. (As I have stated this is an alternate universe and much of the history is different than what is Halo cannon.)

That is until October 7, 2525, a ‘day that will live in infamy.’ When contact from the Earth colonized planet known as Harvest ceased, a UNSC battle group was sent out to investigate it. What they found was too horrible than they could imagine. They reported back to High Command that the entire population of Harvest was utterly destroyed and the planet’s surface turned to black, molten glass. Nothing was left, not even microbes. There was one ship left—an alien ship that destroyed every ship in the battle group save one—the Hercules. The alien ship that was left—gave the UNSC a message, “Your deaths are the will of the gods—and we are their instruments.” Thus started the war against the Covenant. The ship that sent the message was a medium-sized cruiser called Sacred Intervention commanded by the recently promoted Sangheili known as Telek ‘Herosee. This knowledge only comes later.

Vice Admiral Cole was sent to take back Harvest and to punish the alien fleet that was responsible. He brought with him the largest fleet of UNSC ships in human history and managed to win the battle—at a costly price of most of his ships. It was only when he returned to Earth that he found out the battle he had won was merely a diversion set by the aliens who called themselves the Covenant. Returning, he discovered that one by one, the Outer Colonies fell to the might of the Covenant. They left a trail of glassed planets in their wake. Their goal—the total annihilation of the human species. Why, the UNSC could not tell. They never even knew that the Covenant existed until Harvest was destroyed.

By the time it was the mid 2530s, all of the Outer Planets were completely destroyed. Cole then appoints the Cole Protocol, that no human ship should ever lead the Covenant to Earth or its Inner Planetary Colonies. Many ships are destroyed, either by the Covenant, or destroyed to keep the Covenant from obtaining the coordinates to Earth. With this war, came humanity’s union. Various human factions set aside their differences to focus on defending what planets and ships they had left. Many times the council of the UN brought forth thoughts of bringing back Technomancy to help in this war, but informants from Malcho had stated that it would take several decades to once more regain everything that was lost when the technology was banned. The UN established the Orbital Defense, just in case something went wrong and the Covenant found Earth. So far, so good, the battles that were fought were waged still in around the Outer Colonies. Most of the Inner Colonies did not believe that the Covenant existed—many believed it was some sort of conspiracy scare by the government. And a lot of these ruses were caused by the Office of Naval Intelligence to keep up planetary moral. Still, there were Shadowrunners willing to infiltrate ONI and find out for themselves whether or not the stories of this alien force were true. But even then, ONI still held fast to its fairy tales that everything was alright—when it really wasn’t. The humans were loosing the war. Mostly it was because the Covenant had superior technology. But that was about to change…

On the Covenant side, in Terran year 2537, Ship Master Telek ‘Herosee was promoted to Fleet Master and became Supreme Commander Otto ‘Gamamee’s second in command. It was then on the battle for the Inner Colony known as Atkins that the Covenant revealed its latest secret weapon—cloak-enabled ships. Fleet Master ‘Herosee commanded the first cloak-enabled assault carrier named the Shade of Darkness, and swiftly brought victory for the fleet Particular Justice—and the destruction of Atkins and the fleet that attempted to save it. 10 cloaked ships were able to wipe out the larger ships of the fleet within a few hours, leaving the rest of Particular Justice the ‘easy pickings’ of the smaller ships. The Covenant decided that Special Operations Commanders were the perfect leaders to navigate cloak-enabled ships. Telek was once a Spec Ops Commander himself. All Zealot Ship Masters of cloaked ships had installed in their gold armor the cloaking active camouflage device that allowed them to go invisible on the ground. Most of the crew deployed from these ships were either Stealth or Spec Ops warriors. It was then that the Prophet of Truth ordered Otto to send Telek out on a single mission that could hope end the war and bring humanity’s existence to a swift and painful close. On November 11, 2539, Telek was sent out with a small battle group of four other cloaking ships to a small planet inhabited by humans. The planet itself was underdeveloped and not many humans lived there. Telek’s orders were not to engage them or destroy the planet, only to bring back artifacts of the Covenant’s Lords—the Forerunners. These artifacts would lead the Covenant closer into obtaining their objective—supremacy and immortality—the Great Journey.

As Telek went on his mission the Covenant encountered a new species known as the Jiralhanae and brought them in. The Prophets saw potential in these huge, brutish, hairy monsters and began to favor them over the founding species—the Sangheili—much to the Sangheili High Council’s displeasure. The Jiralhanae also began to harbor resentment towards the Sangheili—believing them to be arrogant and ‘stuck-up’—also weak in comparison to themselves. This began to stir up heat between the two species.

Telek returned to the Covenant, after his mission, a changed being. The artifacts he found told him the truth and showed him that the religion that the Covenant followed was false. Not only was it false, but it would spell out doom for everyone. This knowledge began to break down his mental pillars and caused him to drink heavily and do irrational things—like sing old human war songs from the 1940s in front of the troops. The arrival of the Jiralhanae did not help in the situation and Telek and his supporters began to see potential undermining in the Council Hierarchs. Telek, himself, began to see the war against the humans as some sort of diversion to draw attention away from the plots of subjugation of his own Sangheili people by the Prophets themselves. And for this, Telek began to slowly hate the Prophets. And he and four other Ship Masters of his small battle group wanted out of the Covenant.

This story here is an example of the irrational stunts that Fleet Master Telek ‘Herosee began to do following the discovery of the truth. What translated Forerunner text that ‘Herosee had found that told him everything about the Forerunner is locked away safely on his ship—even hidden from his C.O. the Supreme Commander of Particular Justice. Telek tries to find a reason why this war was started and in his dim stupor, tries to stop it. How he tries to stop it is rather comical.

It is to be noted that during the war against the Covenant—Covenant ships were receiving transmissions from Earth from the late 20th Century to the early 21st Century. These are radio signals that Earth had transmitted at that time and are now just reaching the Orion Arm. This explains why the Covenant was able to transmit their message in English to the Hercules and how Telek knew old war songs from the 1940s, and explains how Telek knows German. It should also be noted that these transmissions could very well lead the Covenant to Earth without the aid of UNSC ship coordinates.