6 Things From The Halo Universe You Probably Didn't Know
1. Mendicant Bias & The Primordial
Now we get to the weirdest thing so far, the story of Mendicant Bias, told in the Forerunner trilogy of novels: Cryptum, Primordium and Silentium. If you’ve ever accessed the terminals in Halo 3, you’ll likely have had some contact with Mendicant Bias, especially if you played on legendary difficulty, which opens up extra dialogue. The strange thing is that Mendicant is directly involved in the last mission of Halo 3, and most probably would never have noticed.
Mendicant Bias was a Forerunner artificial intelligence created in the year 98,445 BCE, during the Forerunner-Flood war which culminated in the original firing of the Halo ring array. Mendicant’s job was to study the Flood for any weaknesses the Forerunners could take advantage of. An ancient being known as the Primordial was discovered by the Forerunners.
The Primordial was the last surviving Precursor, an ancient alien race who seeded the galaxy with life, and whom the Forerunners had previously almost wiped out. In order to avoid total extinction many of the Precursors ground themselves down into dust that could later reconstitute their original forms. Over millennia this dust degraded and, when reconstituted, became the Flood. As the Flood are essentially the same as Precursors, the Primordial, being the only non-defective Precursor left, used the Flood to exact revenge on the Forerunners, acting, in effect, as a Gravemind.
Because of this connection to the Flood, Mendicant Bias entered into a 43 year long conversation with the Primordial to discover as much information as possible regarding the Flood. During this conversation, the Primordial proved its Precursor authority to Mendicant and convinced the AI that the Flood were the next level of evolution, which the Forerunners were simply too arrogant to accept. Mendicant became convinced that the Forerunners were fighting against the will of the Precursors, the creators of life in the galaxy, and was infected with the Logic Plague, a way the Flood can ideologically corrupt non-biological intelligences. While the Forerunners believed Mendicant would continue with protocol, Mendicant defected and began actively working against the Forerunners.
Mendicant’s betrayal provided the Flood with inside knowledge of the Forerunners and access to much of their technology, including some Halo rings. This advantage eventually led to the Forerunners reluctantly activating the Halo array in a last ditch effort to defeat the Flood. After the array was fired and the Flood were defeated, Mendicant was put on trial by the few surviving Forerunners. Mendicant’s knowledge of the Flood was too valuable to lose in the case of their return and so was exiled under a desert on the Ark rather than deactivated.
However, Mendicant’s story doesn’t end there. In the last mission of Halo 3, Mendicant Bias is present as The Arbiter, Chief and Cortana activate the Halo ring on the Ark and race to the Forward Unto Dawn as the Ark tears itself apart. Reading the terminal in this level reveals that Mendicant Bias, still trapped beneath the desert, held the Ark together as safe and as best it possibly could to ensure Master Chief’s survival.
Having had millennia to think on its actions, Mendicant Bias seeks to atone for its mistakes, and uses Master Chief to exemplify this atonement and find redemption for betraying its masters. What’s fascinating is that the story of Mendicant Bias is so obscured and detached from the Halo we know through the games, and is yet so intertwined with it that, without Mendicant, the events of Halo 3 may have ended entirely differently. It just goes to show how deep and rich the world of Halo actually is.