#halo: fractures

[saintstestimony]

IDs in alt text.

Anarosa, written by Kevin Grace and featured in Halo: Fractures: Extraordinary Tales from Halo Canon. One of my favorite stories.

[gladsomevarangian]

A Samurai who wields the pink mist of Suban in battle is a deadly foe.

[bloodgulchblog]

I’m extremely tired and I’ve managed to go so long without doing a rapidfire explosion of posts about any one book, but it turns out that being vexed by something is all the fuel I need.

Losing my shit at the idea that taking Spartan-IIIs from the class with fight-or-flight response mods that make them a potential liability in spy work into spies is.... somehow better for them than letting them do work that doesn’t require them to do social infiltration?

Literally Spartan-IVs are out here blowing shit up all the time with the subtlety of 7 foot tall people blowing shit up, and nobody acts like the IVs are treated as only weapons.

This is such a weird situation to act like having them do this is somehow saving them from something. Like, if you wanted to convince me anyone actually cared about these kids, why isn’t the goal to get them therapy and try and give them a chance at a life more under their control. They’re literally 14. The UNSC is minting Spartan-IVs like change at this point in the lore, it’s not like it’s Covenant war times when they can call all hands vitally necessary. The UNSC is still not good but at least that would be a sliver less reprehensible, you know?

Don’t get me wrong I don’t object on the grounds that Halo stories shouldn’t be about the UNSC doing awful shit because like.... that’s the point a lot of the time. (And while I’m here: Not to ignore that teenagers going on extremely awful milsf adventures is a selling point for having fun reading Halo sometimes because hey, I got into Halo as a teenager devouring the stories about the Spartans because the way that’s messed up was fun. That’s a whole appeal there.)

It’s the way “what if we force the already fucked up teenagers to do even more fucked up shit where they have to pretend to be adults and drink and flirt with adults and they’re clearly really uncomfortable” is presented as somehow a “kinder” work to force them to do than the running and gunning they were already forced to become well-acquainted with.

What the Ferrets stories want me to take away as a reader about the situation the Gammas are in just doesn’t scan for me at all.

[nekoprankster218]

okay so was anyone gonna tell me that Halo released a short story about a Sangheili telling a little girl the story of Fal 'Chavamee while protecting her only to be like "actually this ending is depressing how about you make one up with your toys"

or was I supposed to just find a random comment, wonder wtf they were talking about and thought they meant Oasis from Halo: Fractures, google "halo story shard", and find out there's a whole part of canon that I've just completely never heard about???

[poisonheadcrabsalesman]

Little thing written based on @clovis-bray-ate-my-son's post here about Fractures: FIREWALL. Cool ideas about more ways to hurt John Halo

-

Cortana was gone.

The Created had begun to fracture, but one of her most loyal had remained. Sloan had reached through the ashes and found them. Remnants. Ghosts.

Catherine Halsey was meticulous in the documentation of all her works. Logs, measurements, brain scans, and even tissue and blood samples all locked away. What was more troubling to Sloan was the obvious care and affection with which Cortana had sequestered these datapoints away and the name that lingered in the echoing fragments of Her dying embers. Something like an unmade promise lingered in the space between files. Hopes of family, seen one last time.

The FIREWALL contingency had already been set in motion with prime candidates being ensnared by the simulation and bending to the inevitable. His purpose had been redefined, Sloan would not sit idly by and see all the work undone, because of weakness towards old pets.

She had always had so much faith in that particular Spartan.

Sloan would not see him succeed in Her absence. FIREWALL was live and flesh and blood would be subsumed and remade into something more. Circuits given souls, like phoenixes, these Spartans would rise again as something new, reborn in their image.

Sloan lingers over the files and chooses his new warriors.

Grace 093. James 005. Will 043.

There's more names, more files and samples. Entire bodies supposedly jettisoned after augmentation failure. More than enough material for Sloan to work with. ONI and their human greed for knowledge and power would be the exiled human's undoing. Their own protectors would rise under a new banner.

The advances made with Chimera would make them into the pawns he needed them to be.

-

It's cold when they come to, but it's familiar. The pain of being reborn is close enough to cryo they don't notice it, too lost in a quick reunion before another twisted familiarity rings through the room.

“You have been called upon to serve." - The voice is wrong, not hers, but the message plays, drawing up the memory of being small and alone together in that auditorium - "There will be a great deal of hardship on the road ahead, but I know you will make it.”

Muscles move on their own. Synapses fire, electricity spurs the meat into movement. Memories are fresh and sharp but the minds holding them fog over under the commands.

The first Executors are deployed.

-

John 117 ducks behind cover as an explosion kicks up dust and debris rains down.

Whoever he's fighting is good with grenades and reads his movements with ease. He's old, but not rusty. Joints ache, muscles burn, and scars itch under his armor. He’s always in a state of half-healed injuries these days - feeling more like scar tissue than Spartan.

This new threat is skilled, smart, and what's worse is they work together like a team. He hasn't found any openings to pick them off as they push their line forward and cut off his options. His own team is gone, swept off to parts and missions unknown as this new threat grows and The Master Chief is alone again.

Their armor is new and strange, more of a mix of limb replacements and direct augmentations than a Mjolnir-like exoskeleton. Numbers are emblazoned on their breastplates, familiar enough to sting when he reads them.

Numbers he hadn't seen in decades, save for when he closed his eyes. Numbers that brought Mendez's voice back to the forefront of his mind.

These soldiers, fighting for the Created, moved like Spartans, worked together like Spartans.

 And they bore the numbers of his dead siblings.

Worse still, they had the same tells, the same body language that only someone who knew them would recognize. He was no stranger to psychological tactics, but this was another level. 

A whistle sounds over the battlefield, the six note tune turning his stomach to stone, but the reply call is there on his lips. Ready to signal “family, safety”.

But they weren’t anymore. Wasted or spent, he was one of the only ones truly left. 

These were shadows wearing their numbers and he couldn’t let them win. 

[halo-smashorpass]

[appo-arsin]

Tenrai IV

In celebration of Tenrai IV, I've made a couple cool renders of the new armour sets. First time doing art like this, so I hope y'all like them!

[lmaverick123]

Top 15 Games that Need a Remake (2023 Edition)

I saw that GameBolt made a video about this topic, but I found it kind of dull to watch.  It had ALL of the usual suspects on there from videos that other channels have made.  I made a list like this about 8 years ago, and I thought to myself – why not actually look at this topic again?  Find games that aren’t just a few years old to ask if we could get a sequel to them.  Especially since some of…

[frogblast-the-ventcore]

Some fans on Reddit have created backstories for the Halo Infinite Fracture armors, to tie them into the mainline universe. Imo, they've done a great job!

[monitorchakas]

Please clap reblog the polls to spread the outreach numbers

[voidgallery]

Please, don't shake the lightbulb.

I think we need more halo ocs that are forerunner based.

[eschatonjudge]

jun has a license to kill

[empresskadia]

I was gonna write before bed but now a thunderstorm rolled in, and I just wanna nap/sleep.

My to-do list for my fanfics for the next few days

-finish plotting Fractured part two and start writing. I’m aiming for 1000 words this time.

-start on Jerome’s piece, it’ll be around 700 words (I hope)

-mess around with Immortal She and get the next scene written out.

For Gentle Touches, I have to finish Halo: Ghosts of Onyx before I can continue writing, but I will say 2.4 is Kelly’s chapter.

I originally was only going to do Blue team but that went out the window. There will in fact be several Spartans receiving chapters. Blue team’s chapters revolves all around each other, so it’s gonna be interesting.

Oh-

I finished Halo: Fall of Reach and y’all will get my thoughts tomorrow and the scenes I highlighted. This was tonight’s Ted talk, thank you for joining.

[bloodgulchblog]

A Whistle-Stop Tour of the Fractures Anthology Pt. 2

I return.

Let's keep talking about Halo stories.

Just two this time: Defender of the Storm (which I liked) and A Necessary Truth (which I want to meet in the pit.)

Defender of the Storm by John Jackson Miller

Miller worked on the comic anthology Tales from Slipspace and worked on Rise of Atriox, also a comic. I have consumed neither of these things yet.

There are three Forerunner stories in this anthology but this one's actually my favorite because I love stories about ordinary people with miserable jobs that end up in extraordinary circumstances. (I mean, this is also ostensibly sometimes a Red vs Blue blog. I know what I am.)

It also actually feels like a straight up science fiction short story with a bit of a mystery in it in a way that almost no Halo story bothers to. I really respect that.

Adequate-Observer is a Warrior-Servant Manipular (you remember, a young Forerunner who hasn't gone through their first mutation yet) who is stationed on a gas mining platform over a gas giant. Things are getting super nasty in the war with the Flood, but Adequate's world is this rig because his post has been here for 15 years solid. Other Forerunners get cycled through this post in a normal fashion, but not him. The new crop that just arrived is unusually experienced, even, and that makes Adequate feel worse by comparison. He's kind of a social outcast, they bully him, he gets left with the shittiest jobs, and he is more than a little bitter about it.

It's a boring job that he doesn't like, and sometimes he has nothing better to do than argue with his ancilla about weird shapes he sees moving around down in the gas swirls. Are those winged creatures? His ancilla tells him this is nonsense.

Then one day, the Flood starts coming down the vanes of the rig. Adequate and the others try their best (and Adequate in particular tries and fails to save the one who gave him the nickname Barely-Adequate) but they cannot stop the Flood from consuming most of the Warrior-Servants and rapidly taking over the vanes of the rig. Adequate actually sees one of the avian creatures come up close to one of the rig windows, and gets to be right about that at least. He also has a narrow escape where he has to crawl through a particle collection tube and.... it looks like it hasn't actually been used in over a decade? But that's so weird, why would there be regular unloading of the tanks if they're not being filled...?

Anyway.

It comes down to Adequate-Observer and Capital-Enforcer, the most impressive of the new Warrior-Servants, which is good because that means they have the two keys needed to activate the system to scuttle the station.

But then, Capital-Enforcer tells Adequate something... weird....

WEIRD!!!

Capital-Enforcer gets consumed by the Flood and it's up to Adequate-Observer to do the thing. As he does, he figures out what he thinks has been going on:

The winged creatures that live in the gas storms below are able to survive and fly in incredibly toxic unlikely conditions that would destroy most life. If the Flood were to absorb them and gain that quality, it would be disastrous.

Adequate, however, survives.

He wakes up some time later to find that the command module of the rig is floating in the eye of a gas storm, now that the vanes have been ejected and destroyed. It can hover here indefinitely, and given that the station had been fully supplied for a full complement of Forerunner workers and that he is alone, he has enough to live on for (conceivably) the rest of his life.

It's a weird way to go, but hey. We also get a title drop.

It was good and I liked it. 👍

Unlike our next item...

A Necessary Truth by Troy Denning

I've talked to you guys about Veta Lopis, and also this short story. I hate Veta Lopis and this short story.

I think you're probably aware of my Veta Lopis/Ferrets problem if you've been on this blog for a while, but as usual when I really hate something let me disclaimer: I do not judge or make negative assumptions about people who like things I do not like. I think it would be wildly irresponsible to do so. I'm also aware that a lot of people in this fandom who like Lopis have kind of reconstructed her into something else for themselves. Nobody here is my enemy over this.

Alright, disclaimer over, let's go.

Halo has a lot of things in it that are dumb in places, and I let a lot of things slide because I'm having fun. However, the way the two Ferrets stories I've read so far piss me off is so specific. I have no defense against it. It's different from how I hate the Kilo Five books (which I am not at all embarrassed about) because it feels in some way petty. But here we are.

After Last Light (which I should also summarize... eventually....) the surviving three Spartan-IIIs from Gamma company's Saber Team (Mark, Ash, and Olivia) are being trained for ONI spy work. The reason for this is because Gamma Company's modified berserker fight-or-flight response poses a threat to the Spartan branch's reputation and possibly their missions.

So. Natural candidates for delicate social infiltration training, right?

They're currently on a training mission where they have to look unassuming in an officer's club, which means the boys are being told they have to drink a bunch of alcohol and the one girl (Olivia) is dressed up to look much older and flirting with grown men.

They're all still fourteen, by the way. Yes, Spartans all went through horrible shit while young, but that shit wasn't treated as funny. This is all laughs until Olivia gets drugged by some dude.

The perspective we're reading this story from (it's limited third but you know, very much in her head)? Veta Lopis, former detective who had to leave her home planet for siding with the UNSC in a conflict that broke out. She has been made the team's handler/den mother despite 1) having no experience doing spy work and 2) being dumb as three bricks in a bucket. (Alright maybe that's unfair. Trying so hard to be less unfair over here.)

The story is pretty standard spy stuff, trying to find the team they're spy training against, not get caught, a civilian trying to investigate the Spartan-IIIs gets involved and also dead, the team has to hide the body because that was an accident but if the Spartan-IIIs are known to have killed someone on this mission it's going to remove them from this training program, idk Serin Osman is there and knows Lopis lied about that but seems to think this proves that Lopis is good at her job now. (????)

The Ferrets get through okay and we are so proud of them and so proud of Veta Lopis because she is Like Their Mom Now, despite how Troy Denning never once successfully sold to me that she was supposed to have bonded with them after spending almost an entire book convinced that Mark is a serial killer.

If you want to hear me yell more about this story, the link at the top of this section is to a post I made while reading it.

It's dumb and bad and I hate it.

I think it's smarter for me to continue to post this in pieces, but I think part 3 will be the last part. I think I have less to say about the rest of the stories, and I'm gonna just skip talking about "Into the Fire" until I talk about Smoke and Shadow because it's literally just part of that novel.

[freyja-athena]

Guess the fandom has decided the next Halo discourse topic for this week. Here we go again...

[poisonheadcrabsalesman]

Tell me more about this firewall guy I am not immune to ai

Oh hell yeah join me. Halo doing fucked up AI shit has me so excited to see what's next. So Firewall is Halo's newest funny official fanfic where they make different timelines [Fractures] to explore/ justify fun armors.

Sloan is an AI who was governor of the Planet Meridian and he joined Cortana's AI rebellion in the canon universe.

He's old for an AI and joins Cortana because he's near Rampancy.

Olympia Vale: "What's wrong with him? He looks broken."

Holly Tanaka: "Rampancy onset. Late stage, from the looks. Probably sacrificing resolution for logic cycles."

Governor Sloan: "I have welcomed you to my home. Do not be so rude as to make my health a point of conversation."

In the Firewall universe, he takes it a step further and activates Firewall contingency to "recruit" Spartan-IVs in this failed timeloop trap. He's the last leader of a dying rebellion and is taking desperate measures. The whole thing is in the first week and has a funny choose-your-own-adventure blurb here.

They're turning the Spartans into puppets! Meat puppets! Machine and Nerve! It's really cool.

The FIREWALL agendum must be set in motion. It will burn hot. It will consume. And when their ephemeral vessels are gone, we shall indeed take that which remains and remake it in our own image.

They will become our Executors. Infolife given form and force. Circuits given soul.