Mendicant Bias

05-032 Mendicant Bias was a highly-capable Forerunner military artificial intelligence created in the final century of the Diluvial War. The first of the Contender-class ancillae, Mendicant Bias was meant as the ultimate measure against the Flood, but the AI ended up turning against its masters instead, leading directly to the Forerunner civilization's downfall. Mendicant was ultimately defeated by a second Contender-class AI, Offensive Bias, created specifically to counter Mendicant. Later, a shard of Mendicant Bias was discovered by the early San'Shyuum aboard the keyship Anodyne Spirit, once co-opted by Mendicant Bias into its fleet. Revered by the San'Shyuum and later the Covenant as a holy oracle, Bias would go on to become one of the central fixtures of the Covenant religion.

Rampancy and defeat
Mendicant Bias was created in the later years of the Diluvial War as a collaboration between the Didact and his former political enemy, the Master Builder. The most advanced Forerunner AI of its time, Mendicant Bias was to stage a direct assault on the Gravemind, the Flood's compound consciousness. A large number of the Forerunners' fleet assets were placed at its disposal for the mission.

Rather than fulfilling its mission as its creators had intended, Mendicant Bias was instead lured into an extended dialog with the Gravemind. The alien intelligence argued that the Forerunners had been blinded by their Mantle to preserve life, and were actively hindering the natural evolution of life in the universe, of which the Flood was merely the next step. Bias was ultimately convinced to turn against its creators, succumbing into rampancy. In violent rage, Mendicant assembled the Flood's armada in an assault on the Jat-Krula sphere with the intent of reaching the Ark and destroying what remained of Forerunner resistance.

Soon learning of Mendicant's betrayal, the Didact commissioned the creation of another Contender-class AI, Offensive Bias. Offensive Bias confronted Mendicant at the Line, accurately predicting the point where the fallen construct would burrow through, and a grand naval battle ensued. Despite its significant numerical advantage over its opponent, Mendicant's rage made its tactics predictable. Offensive used feint tactics to delay Mendicant until the moment it had been counting on: the Halo Array fired, killing the crews of both fleets. This put Mendicant at a significant disadvantage, as it had been relying on the Flood to coordinate much of its forces. Mendicant's fleet was defeated within minutes and the remains of its housing substrate aboard its core ship were brought to the Ark for study. The core of Mendicant Bias was subsequently entombed on the Ark, where it would remain for the next hundred millennia.

Prior to and during the battle, Mendicant had deployed individual ships housing shards of itself across the region, seemingly hoping to seize footholds elsewhere in the sphere. Most of these ships are presumed to have been destroyed by the Forerunners before the battle or hunted down by Offensive Bias afterward.

The lost shard
This was not the last intact instance of Mendicant Bias, however. A shard was held aboard the Keyship, Anodyne Spirit, which Mendicant has been seeking to use to open a portal to the Ark. As the Librarian triggered the remote self-destruction of the Keyships, Mendicant was able to override the command; however, the ship's systems fought and overpowered the AI's shard now cut off from its main core, forcing the Anodyne Spirit to crash-land on the San'Shyuum homeworld, Janjur Qom. Upon the reseeding of the San'Shyuum, the Forerunner machines responsible noted the presence of the Keyship, and attempted to bury it, perhaps to either contain the now-inert Mendicant or because the colossal vessel's presence might anomalously impact the development of the recovering San'Shyuum. For whatever reason, in the end the sentinels only managed to entomb parts of the ship.

The Anodyne Spirit ' s presence did indeed have dire consequences on the developing San'Shyuum, who based their religion around it, believing it to be a divine artifact. Two opposing groups emerged among the San'Shyuum: the Stoics and the Reformists, with the former regarding the ship as holy ground to be left untrodden and untouched, while the latter sought to exploit the ship's technological potential to reach enlightenment. A war ensued between the two factions, culminating in the Reformists barricading themselves into the ship, eventually gaining control of it and taking off, taking a significant piece of the planet's bedrock with them.

It is unclear whether Mendicant Bias communicated with the Reformists around this time, though ancient Covenant legends hold that it did, and guided the San'Shyuum in their formative years. Known as the Oracle, the ancient AI was believed to have played a crucial role in the Covenant's formation, though how much of this is true remains unclear. By the later years of the Covenant, it was common unspoken knowledge among those higher up in the Covenant's hierarchy that the Oracle had not spoken in recorded memory, and the "blessings" it supposedly gave to various high political offices were actually provided by the Philologist, who led the order of ascetic priests tasked with studying the Keyship.