User:Tacitus/Sandbox

Miscellaneous headcanons / ideas
Things I haven't yet got good places to put.

Covenant

 * The prominence of ministerial standardized military forces with more-or-less standard gear is actually fairly recent in the Covenant. Up until the early ages of the Consolidation Era (c. 1800- ) most militaries came from the armed forces of Sangheili noble houses or regional states, all of which used their own gear, organization and traditions. These still exist in most places but have lost much of their original prominence and importance to the ministerial armed forces. This was part of the considerable decentralization that happened in the preceding Feudal and Late Antiquity eras; the of the Covenant's High Antiquity (650 BCE-200 CE) and earlier parts of Late Antiquity had seen more armed power centralized under High Charity's control.
 * Even so, senior Sangheili warriors typically wear bespoke armor (as opposed to switching out armor sets as they rank up, for example, they add regalia to their existing harness). Also, regional forces with unique equipment and organization are still called upon from time to time (e.g. the Heretics from H2 are associated with the Refum clan, who are known for their alliances with local Yanme'e hives - hence their unique gear)


 * Most or all Councilors actually use unique attire; the gear we see in H2 is a generalization/simplification for the sake of gameplay. (i.e. maybe the core design of the harness and headdress is generally the same, but there is variety in ornamentation, color, tabards and surcoats, etc.)


 * Cybernetics used to be more of a thing in the early Covenant, but have since become increasingly unfashionable, especially among the Sangheili as their metaculture has assumed a more atavistic overall paradigm.


 * A large portion of the plant life on Sanghelios and various other worlds (including human-settled ones) uses retinaldehyde as its photosynthetic pigment rather than chlorophyll, making purple, rather than green, the predominant color of plant life.

Humanity and the UNSC

 * Human AIs are not operational while outside a processing substrate, such as a data center or MJOLNIR armor; e.g. one cannot converse with an AI while it is only occupying a data chip, because the chip is only for storage, not a processing platform. E.g. in the opening scene of the Halo 4 level Requiem, the Master Chief chats with Cortana while she's demonstrably outside his armor. This would mean the armor isn't actually needed to run her, and that miraculously expensive data-crystal layer might as well be dead weight. By the later years of the Human-Covenant War, most military Dumb AIs could run within a field-issue armored matrix, albeit at a cost of performance. Smart AIs generally require more powerful hardware to run.


 * Human terraforming is scaled-down from what's described in the Encyclopedia, and more akin to what's mentioned in Contact Harvest: worlds can be nudged toward habitability, but not entirely remade. While places like Mars could theoretically be fully terraformed over centuries, this is often not feasible as millions of people were already living there by the time people started seriously contemplating the prospect. Though there is an actively-maintained livable atmosphere, most of Mars is still quite cold and arid, with terraformed oases existing only in various craters, chasms and underground warrens. The Jovian Moons haven't been terraformed at all, though there may be some limited forms of artificial shielding in place to protect the inner moons from Jupiter's radiation belt.


 * The majority of Earth's population is unemployed, while another large portion work in sinecures; so much of society is automated that there simply aren't enough jobs to go around and so most of the population lives off of government welfare. One way to offset the collective malaise of the populace has historically been continual expansion. This is commonly perceived as brain drain, with Earth's best and the brightest generally moving on from their cushy but boring lives on Earth to tame the frontier or enlist in the UNSC. This does somewhat change in the post-war era as Earth and all of SolCore have their own reconstruction projects to contend with, and the standard of living is no longer quite as high in many places.


 * Biome-specialized UNSC troops. Most Marine units are trained in principle as generalists, with a notable bias toward the environment they're trained in (e.g. those trained in Reach's Highlands hang out most in mountainous woodland terrain). However, the UNSC also makes use of the environments their troops come from, e.g. space-dwellers being assigned to special EVA and close-quarters boarding and habitat combat units, low or high gravity worlds being a specific concern, plus various jungle, arctic and desert-oriented units on top of that. This is probably more prominent in the Army, where the local garrison mostly sticks to their homeworld's own soil, or otherwise gets deployed on fairly similar worlds.


 * Traxus was always a Martian industrial company, though in the 2100s and early 2200s they were also expanding into computing, AI and cybernetics as those fields were booming then. Initially, this was profitable, and many breakthroughs were made. Traxus' experimental AIs were some of the best in the system. However, the AI and computing business was entirely abandoned shortly after the Traxus Crash, and the company would since focus solely on heavy industry. The economic impact of the Crash was catastrophic on the company and nearly bankrupted it, though over two centuries it managed to bounce back to become one of the leading heavy industry and logistics companies in the Human Sphere.


 * Civilian neural tech is more widespread, at least among people who do various types of specialist work. E.g. Ben Giraud's forehead bumps in Second Sunrise Over New Mombasa are memory augmentation and eidetic recall aids; they could be hidden, but having them visible is more of a fashion thing (c.f. jewelry). Other roles and aug types: mood control (e.g. focus), integrated personal assistant as limited "technomancy" with a small number of mental "switches" (e.g. smart home functions, make notes, look things up - though the range of these is limited and learning to use them takes some time.)
 * Enhanced Rehabilitation Techniques are mind-machine technologies used for the psychological rehabilitation of criminals.
 * Neural interfaces (both civilian and military) can also be used to edit out limited-duration light lag from one's perceptual stream. Late-war and post-war ship crews can have enhanced reaction times and information-processing capabilities to better respond to input from both humans and AI and react to commands in split-second timeframes.


 * Halsey's pioneering work on the S-II flash clones and neural network cloning (e.g. Cortana) opens a Pandora's box where the UNSC is now technically capable of vat-growing (or effectively 3D printing) fully conscious human beings with implanted memories (or just use machine parts for the brain). The only issues are ethical ones, but it hasn't stopped them before.


 * The war created a trend in human architecture favoring easily-defensible structures as well as robust fallout shelters and evacuation plans as standard. Most cities and communities built in the Phoenix Initiative era follow this trend.


 * The orbital MAC platforms most likely use some form of slipspace-based energy transfer, probably related to wavespace in some way. While there are limitations in e.g. range (surface to orbit is about the maximum you can get) and there is considerable bleed-off, the technology works well enough to replace microwave- or laser-based energy transmission for the ODPs. (this is to explain the lack of a clear receiver structure on Reach's ODPs, as well as why the UNSC just doesn't point the power beam straight at the Covenant).


 * The Spartan-IIs and IIIs receive various "secondary" augmentations in order to ensure their bodies can withstand the stresses of the major enhancement procedures; things like reinforced ligaments and enhanced cardiovascular systems. Regular post-augmentation check-ups and service/upgrade procedures over the years are standard as well. (e.g. the Gammas receive upgraded smoother pumps a few years after their augments and eventually bioengineered drug glands that synthesize the counterdrugs).


 * The "AMG" in AMG Transport Dynamics most likely stands for "Asklon Motor Group".


 * The Sabres are an Aerospace Force project.


 * The Bestiarum (along with a handful of other Forerunner records, including bits and pieces of the H3 terminals) were recovered by UNSC forces on the Ark and analyzed post-war.

Plot point ideas/reminders

 * Figure out the Ferret issue and what happens to the Team Saber survivors - some version of Last Light probably still happens, though some elements are eliminated by the butterfly effects of other changes
 * Strewn Shore's evolving political makeup + title of the Minister of the Common Weal?
 * Discovery of Installation 03 at some point (likely over a century from now)
 * Following the onset of the New Diaspora, the Concord's allies (as well as one or two unaffiliated warlords) establish protectorates at worlds the UNSC cannot feasibly police, giving rise to the first notable post-Covenant polities with a significant human presence. One of the groups to do so is a temple-order of Ascetics in the Perseus side of the human sphere. These would mostly be astrographically isolated and independent or semi-autonomous colonies with little to no UNSC presence, or with a nominal UNSC claim but no real ability to protect them.
 * Grunt-centric slave liberation movement in the mid-to-late 2560s (Temerites)
 * A UNSC-Concord joint ship project in the late 2560s (c.f. the Normandy)
 * UNSC ships with pilfered Covenant drives in the post-war era (no more than a few)

Dangling plot threads

 * Installation 04: everything that goes on there from October 2552 onward
 * Installation 05: future of its occupation, settlements and bases between here and there. How's the status of the Flood and the quarantine?
 * What was up with the Menachite crystal and what did Truth want with it? And did he accomplish this?
 * Fate of the Stoic descendants/Janjur Qom San'Shyuum? (ie probably not everyone on Janjur Qom was of the Stoic faction, or was only involved by association) Because the Bestiarum's writers saw fit to establish there was ambiguity over the supernova, we must assume the supernova was a cover-up for something else.

Worldbuilding blind spot reminders

 * Covenant land tenures; benefices and precaria (land given out by secular states to one another, and that allotted by the church/High Charity; temporary and permanent land grants, ennobled and lesser species colonies)
 * Covenant economy (some of this has been talked about, but it needs to be defined more concretely and put to words)
 * Covenant festivals, rituals, sports, pastimes, entertainment
 * Human cultures and religions (some worldbuilding exists, but it needs to be consolidated and added as well as fleshed out) (also Solar cultural groups)
 * Human/UEG government and legal system - discuss this

To-do

 * Determine what happens with Onyx and the GoO crew; consolidate and update old notes

UNSC infantry combat ensembles

 * Note: use "combat ensemble" for the whole set of gear over "BDU" or "battledress", which refer specifically to the underlying uniform.
 * Designations for different kits & armor pieces - intercompatibility? "Canon" status of e.g. H2-H3 gear differences and CE. M43 standard (Reach) was instated to increase interbranch and inter-unit compatibility w/armor pieces and webbing
 * HW/H2A model?

Stories and misc. writing

 * User:Tacitus/The Dawn's Heralds - narrative experiment, mostly for worldbuilding's sake. Planned to be about 3 chapters. May or may not finish.