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.


 * 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 circa the 2570s-2580s or later
 * 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

 * How did the Covenant find Delta Halo? Did Regret know its location already when he stormed Earth, or did Truth send it to him from High Charity, having learned it earlier at some point? Regret beat High Charity to Delta Halo, but the holy city could both be slower than the Solemn Penance, and they were likely held up by having to both batten down the hatches and get everyone on board, like extracting the Arbiter from the gas mine. 343i solved this by establishing Regret just found all the Halos' locations lying around in an unsecured Forerunner laptop on Meridian, but this is more like a handwave than a solution, and doesn't make much sense in light of how important we know compartmentalization of crucial data was to the Forerunners. Not to mention it's a bit of an anticlimax to think that the Covenant spent 3400 years searching the galaxy for the rings, only for all of them to be found within months of one another.
 * 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 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

 * Projects/Onyx - determine what happens with Onyx and the GoO crew; consolidate and update old notes

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.

Covenant hierarchy
Covenant occupational categories in descending order of prestige.


 * Hierarchs & High Councilors. The highest positions attainable within the Covenant.
 * Ordinaries: Members of the religious hierarchy, from clerics and staffers to magistrates, bishops and ministers. In practice, the vast majority of San'Shyuum are considered to occupy this tier, even if they are not members of the clergy. As such, there is considerable variance within the tier.
 * Aristocrats: Secular aristocracy (mainly Sangheili with some San'Shyuum titles); many enjoyed as much power and status as many Ordinary offices. Coincides with military and political leadership positions.
 * Warriors: Various tiers of lesser Sangheili nobility. Some noble ranks toe the line between these and aristocrats.
 * Artisans: Respected trades of "sub-creators"; Architects, crafters, pattern-weavers, artists (notably, not all crafts are regarded as "artisanal")
 * Ennobled: Lesser-species individuals entrusted with special technological, religious or political roles or responsibilities. (May not be a formalized class.)
 * Freeholders and Merchants: A loose and hard-to-categorize grouping that has fluctuated in influence depending on the time or individual(s) in question
 * Fighters: Most lesser-species combatants. Due to the technicalities of Sangheili meritocracy, low-ranked Sangheili combat roles also occupy this tier, though most are quickly promoted to higher ranks.
 * Servants: Higher servile roles; usually regarded as more pleasant than manual labor. The difference between these and Menials in terms of treatment and social perception may be at times vague and largely depends on local cultural attitudes and politics.
 * Menials: Common manual laborers who enjoyed more rights than thralls
 * Thralls: Slaves or serfs who were legally bound to their commander, lord, or organization.

UNSC next-gen warfighter/special programs
Many use technologies tricked down from the Spartan programs, though usually in piecemeal rather than all in one package, making them less notable as a whole than the Spartans. Note that some of these share their names from 343i-era armor variants, as most of those variants don't exist in Daybreak, at least as such.


 * AMALGAM: Navy project experimenting with neural augmentations and extended neural laces for strikecraft pilots. Possibly connected to the Sabre program.
 * ARGONAUT: War-era model for units of independently operating prowler crews & naval special forces, mainly to gather reconnaissance and disrupt Covenant supply lines.
 * CENTURION: Marine Corps cybernetic battlespace awareness enhancement program for field officers on the battalion, company and platoon level. Came with its own helmet.
 * YOKAI: NAVSPECWAR special operations outfit of SPARTAN-III "washouts" with limited augmentations, some of which were later used in the Hoplite program.
 * VALKYRIE: Army Airborne project to enhance joint resilience, endurance, and sensory input processing.
 * JAVELIN: Aerospace Force augmented commando program.
 * LOKI: electrowarfare and infiltration-focused Army (Ranger?) project with minor augmentations; came with a non-strength enhancing photoreactive camouflage suit based on SPI tech


 * Other names
 * ACHILLES
 * ANUBIS
 * ARES
 * ATLAS
 * HERMES
 * PATHFINDER