After the events of halo 3, 7 years have passed. humanity only has earth left, the covenant, despite losing high charity, still has their entire empire. thankfully though, humanity has the support of the elites to protect them. they spend the next 7 years re-growing their population and military with the intention of re-building their galactic empire. the covenant, however, have spent the last 7 years trying to figure out how they should divide their empire, now that the covenant has been broken. arbiter and the elites want separation of the species and division of the planets, the san’shyuum want the covenant to remain because they believe they are stronger as one, even though they no longer believe in the great journey, and the brutes are pissed off and want to destroy humanity and take control of the halo rings, purely to have a super weapon that will make further galactic conquest easier. unfortunately for them, an agreement was made shortly after H3 that no one is allow to occupy a halo ring. meanwhile there’s also a faction of rebel extremists who still believe in the great journey. What the arbiter doesn’t know though is that they are secretly led by the san-shyuum and the brute head chieftain. we start the first campaign on (as our player made spartan 4) being sent to shangelios. we’re invited by the arbiter to take part in a council meeting where the leaders of the different covenant species will form a peace treaty with humanity. ONI however, doesn’t like that we are so weak compared to the covenant, and they don’t really trust them, so they give us a secret mission to assassinate the arbiter and pin it on the brutes in order to start a civil war. when we get to the council, the rebel covenant forces attack and -Yoink- up everything. we use the chaos as an opportunity to murder the arbiter.
arbiter gets killed, no one knows it’s us, brute leaders gets pissed off and says -Yoink- this -Yoink-, -Yoink- your alliance, i’m taking the halo rings. we help the elites (now led by half jaw) to quell the rebels and put a stop to the fighting. we do but it’s too late. the brutes are pissed, the elites are pissed, and the rest of the covenant species are divided. we go back home to report on our successful mission and then we’re sent on to our next mission. we’re sent to a halo ring that’s in the process of being taken over by the brutes. we go to the ring, stop the brutes, and save our forces who were stationed near the ring to monitor it. while infiltering a brute carrier, we discover that this isn’t the first time in the last 7 years that they’ve been trying to capture forerunner structures. we learn that they’ve actually got control of these things called guardians, which are basically giant angel looking structures that the forerunners (who are ancient humans) used to imprison, in domes, misbehaving planets back when they were the self appointed rulers of the galaxy.
we also learn the the ark not only creates and repairs halo rings, but also has a map of their locations and the locations of all the guardians the forerunners built. we go there in search of a map and unsurprisingly, the brutes and the rebel covenants are there working together. we btfo them and as we are looking through the remains of the ring for what we need, we get attacked by the flood, who’ve been trapped on the ring since the end of halo 3. we fight them off and try to nuke the place, but unfortunately we fail. the flood hijack some brute and covenant ships and fly off to god knows where. now the flood have spread loose across the galaxy, there’s a war going on amongst the covenant species, and we are still in pretty bad shape given how far we fell during the human-covenant war. we don’t have a solution for the flood so we’re tasked with taking as much information from the ark as we can, in hopes of finding something that will help us deal with the flood.
being humans (the descendants of forerunners) we are able to extract more information from the ark than the covenant can. from the ark we learn that on top of the halo rings, and the guardians, the forerunners also built numerous shield worlds. these are worlds that can withstand the firing of the halo array. they were built to work in tandem with the rings. species would be relocated to the shield worlds, there they are protect by forerunner combat AIs. the rings are then fired, and everything outside the shield world is destroyed, starving the flood, and leaving the people inside the shield world protected. for whatever reason however, the forerunners abandoned this plan and instead repurposed the shield worlds to store dna from all the species of the galaxy in order to repopulate the galaxy after the halo arrays were fired. from the ark we also learn that a super forerunner ai ‘called the composer’ is present on one of the larger shield worlds. this AI controls all the guardians and all the warrior AIs. we go to the shield world to track this him down and take control of this army. meanwhile we are secretly being followed by the covies and the brutes. we land on the shield world, are deemed enemies by the AIs guarding it, and have to fight through them and the covies to get to the composer.
when we get to the composer we find that he’d been shut off from before the rings were fired. we turn him on and have a chat with him and learn that the reason the forerunners abandoned their original vision for the shield worlds is because the flood was spreading too quickly, and it was getting too difficult to relocate the entire galaxy to these shield worlds. we also learn that since the halo arrays were fired the composer has become a complete psycho. typical AI believes he’s superior to flesh type of stuff. he and his warriors are immune to the flood and like the flood his AI are a hivemind who obey him. in his mind, if everyone and everything was policed by him there would be galactic peace. so he plans to use his warriors and the guardians to take over the galaxy. he wants to trap all the planets of the galaxy that aren’t contaminated by flood in domes, and then he plans on firing the halo arrays. the domes, like the shield world, are immune to the halo array fire, but the reason the forerunners didn’t use the domes is because they are built to only be able to be opened from the outside, and with the composer going nuts they couldn’t trust him to free them. so they wiped out the galaxy instead choosing to repopulate it after the array’s firing. they reprogramed the warrior AIs to guard the shield worlds and the dna stored on them and then fired the halo arrays. we don’t like what the composer plans on doing so we try to mess up his -Yoink-. we try to destroy the shield world and in doing so accidentally unleash all the domed planets that the forerunners imprisoned back when they were top dogs of the galaxy.
now things gets interesting. we have:
- a covenant war that we were instrumental in starting
- brutes after control of the halo rings
- the flood spreading across the galaxy
- a crazy AI who wants to imprison everyone
- a whole bunch of new alien species with a vendetta against the forerunners who have just
been released into the galaxy (keep in mind they think we are forerunners because technically we are)
anyway that’s what i would have done if i was in charge of halo. you’ve now got a franchise where you can introduce as many new factions as you want for all eternity.