It's pretty shameful of Johnson to berate a man for being human and having a human reaction the slaughter of innocent people. I get that you as the author are trying to give Johnson a scene to show how much stronger and more "manly" he is than this other dude but it's having three opposite effect, being unaffected by these kinds of horrors doesn't make Johnson a stronger man, it just makes him less human. This whole scene comes across as him being an asshole bragging about how much of his humanity he's lost operating the other dude for still having his humanity.

I don't buy Commander Keys calling Nasher "My Lord." Calling him Lord Nasher would work but using My Lord implies he's her superior and someone she owes literally to, which she does not. He isn't her or any of their lord, and they wouldn't refer to him as such.

You know I actually like the AU ending to Halo 3 you wrote here.

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I know this was probably posted around 2010 or something, but the -ee suffix at the end of a Sangheili's name denotes military service to the Covenant. For example, the Arbiter would Thel 'Vadamee while in the Covenant, but leaving it he would change his name to Thel 'Vadam. Same with Rtas 'Vadum. In Covenant: 'Vadumee. Out of Covenant: 'Vadum.

Good-bye, Briza. Unlike Vierna, you won't be missed.
Hey, Vierna was an actually sympathetic character. Briza? Not so much.

Cool fight.

Though, there is nothing they could learn from prisoners other than how utterly fucked they are.

I just noticed that Neeshka, when pushed, speaks very similarly to how the devils speak. That's a very fitting touch. Don't know if it was intentional, but I like it.

Active camo doesn't just protect against visual sensors. And it'd be basically useless if it did given the UNSC's standard equipment for its soldiers along with that of the Covenant. Otherwise, a very good fight and chapter. It's been years since I've read this story and it's always enjoyable.

To be clear, Bungie intended humans to be Forerunner and even intended for this to be revealed in Halo 2 and for the series to end there but had to make changes due to time constraints. However, even at the end the humans were still the Forerunners. The only parts of marketing and terminals that contradicted this were made by Frank O'Connor (pretty sure no one else did this in the terminals), who wanted them to be different species and injected his own fanfiction opinions contradicting the lore the company had decided on. It's a bit famous as this was something of a Great Schism in Bungie at the time, though it was really just Frank and a few of his colleagues who thought as he did.

This is also why 343i took the route of the humans and Forerunners being separate, as he was put in charge and boy giving him power a stupid mistake that backfired hard on Microsoft and 343i.

It's a good tale of a backstory for him. But, it falls at the first moment of not just accepting it unthinkingly at face value. He would know that leaving his post would cripple the position, the Flood would overrun, and the consequences of that would either doom his family to the Flood, to the Rings, or to try to survive pretty much alone in a galaxy of Flood as a living Hell seeing as he was aware of the Keyships meant for humanity. Which means he had no reason to leave his post and every reason not to. If he did not know of the Array, then his actions might make some measure of sense for one of those dumbasses who is like "at least they're alive even though they're stuck in a living Hell". He is very clearly not one of those kinds of people, though.

I like that Drizzt is bothered by guns and such, but that he'll swallow his feelings and do what it takes to help people.

Pagan is not "a" religion, it's anything that isn't Abrahamic.

A poorly-planned assassination, but unsurprising for Luskan.

It is very rare for a woman to be capable of physically matching a man. Even more rare for a woman to have both the physical and mental aptitude for the work men generally perform and especially combat. And due to their propensity to be driven by and controlled by emotion even while admitting that they know their choices and actions contradict what they intellectually know, women historically have performed very poorly in leadership roles.

For example, every matriarchy to ever exist has failed to advance (usually, or always, remaining at neolithic or even paleolithic) and has never survived for long. Either dying out due to poor decision-making from its leaders over its lifetime or because of contact with a patriarchal society and then attacking said society. Strangely, matriarchies historically have been very aggressive. This generally led to collapse as they'd attack a patriarchy, get utterly wrecked in battle, and then die out due to either the opposing force pushing their advantage for total victory or, in the case of the "women warriors" societies, they lost most of their means of reproduction in combat and so couldn't sustain their society's existence.

Hilariously, the Greek Amazons are treated in popular media long a strong society of warrior women when the actual Amazons that did exist in Greek history were remembered for being a easily defeated failures who were never able to match up to their male opponents. Mostly they were a mercenary culture and did okay against bandits with their training, armor, and numbers, but were always effortlessly crushed when faced against an organized opposition.

The west is the most recent to experiment with matriarchy and empowering women. Historically, this has always led to the collapse or near collapse of any civilization that has done so. As such, it is unlikely that it will be tolerated in the near future and most definitely hundreds of years in the future simply because any group that goes fully into it will invariably cease to exist as an entity and their remnant and all the other nations and groups would see what happened over and over and avoid that mistake.

Marital Arts aren't actually used in real combat. They're fine for self-defense against people who have no training or talent of any kind, but not actual battle. They were created primarily as a self-improvement exercise. And while they were effective when they were new all those years ago, unarmed combat has advanced just as weaponry has. This is why you see things like a group of Mixed Martial Arts champions ganging up on a freshly graduated Marine and getting utterly curbstomped by him.

"Evidence of racial prejudice"
Not really. When nearly every single member of a race or species is evil, it's not prejudice. It's just plain fact. Heck, it doesn't even need to be nearly all of them, just the great majority. Especially when it's at the point the trusting a member of X race is dangerous because of how high the chance is that he or she will hurt you or use you.