The UNSC Infinity had been surprise attacked upon its arrival at Installation 07 “Zeta Halo”. All hands were ordered to abandon ship as the Infinity was being overrun by The Banished. Spartan Fireteams Phoenix and Warlord managed to board a Pelican to get off the ship and down to the Halo Ring. Only to find anti-aircraft guns awaiting them. They crashed down upon the ring and in the middle of a Banished base.
Eight Spartans were captured. Brought to the House of Reckoning, they were shown proof of Atriox tossing The Master Chief into the black void of space. With the Infinity destroyed and humanity’s savior boasted to be dead, these Spartans had their morale broken. But their spirit was still intact. Despite how much Atriox hated Humanity for their creation of Cortana, he believed he could salvage something useful from these captured Spartans.
Given to Escharum, they were one by one thrown into an arena where endless amounts of Banished were sent in to fight them. The only way to stop the fight was to accept death or to renounce your allegiance to the UNSC and join The Banished. Of course the Spartans resisted. And thus, Escharum went about to break this defiant spirit they possessed.
One by one these Spartan-IVs fell in the endless arena. For each of these fallen Spartans, their bodies were brought before the remaining that still lived, forced to watch as The Banished stripped them of their armor and then tossed the corpse away. Spartan after Spartan, loss after loss. Three of these Eight made the hard choice. Three Spartans renounced their former ties and pledged allegiance to The Banished.
Two from Fireteam Phoenix, one from Fireteam Warlord. Spartans no more. They proved their mettle in The Arena. And after a mission to slay Spartan Fireteam Xerxes and the marines they were with; their loyalty was sealed.
They are now The Gladiators.
Donning armor made from a hybrid of MJOLNIR and Pavium’s designs, these three men would be among the ranks of Escharum’s Spartan Killers. They would be vital in training the other Spartan Killers in the tactics used by Spartans so as to develop traps and counters. And they would even go out to hunt and kill other Spartans.
But the death of Escharum did indeed inspire others. Samuel Clarke, formerly Spartan Clarke, is one of these three Gladiators. And upon hearing that it was The Master Chief that killed Escharum and seeing the recordings of the battle… it set a fire in his heart once again.
Samuel Clarke is but one of the three Gladiators. Upon seeing that The Master Chief still lives, hope has been rekindled within him. While the other two Gladiators have their assignment of attempting to kill The Master Chief, Samuel seeks to work as a double-agent. He will report to his superiors that he failed to kill The Master Chief on their first encounter, but that is only because he slipped intel and an encrypted communicator to John. His actions will eventually make him just another target for The Spartan Killers as well.
Elliot Winters is another of The Gladiators. He was the first to pledge his allegiance to The Banished, the first to give in under the pressure. He hates what he is doing, but he hunts Spartans only because the alternative is to be killed by The Banished. Upon hearing that The Master Chief is alive, he faces off against John-S117 in order to get himself killed by the hero he respected and failed. Only to find that John doesn’t kill him at the end of their encounters. He eventually tries to take his own life, but John’s intervention only results in Spartan Winters losing his left arm in the confusion. John will spare Elliot and say that his devotion to the UNSC may be tarnished, but it is still there. If he wants penance, dying saving the Marines scattered on Zeta Halo would be preferable.
Anthony Andre is the last of The Gladiators. And he is the most far gone. The Banished mocked the name of his fireteam, the Warlords. And so they made sure that his fellow Spartans faced not only an endless fight but ones with poor ordinance and the most elite among them. The Warlords died one by one. But not Spartan Andre. He had actually impressed Atriox and went toe-to-toe with the leader of The Banished. He lost his fight, but Atriox saw promise in Andre. And so, he was made the leader of The Gladiators. Andre was broken and twisted. He was too far gone and has truly lost his way, siding with The Banished whole-heartedly.
Though John initially spares him, Andre insists on a fight to the death, and uses Spartan Clarke as bait. However, Elliot makes his choice at a key moment. Winters frees Clarke, shoving Andre into the fighter pit that he lured The Master chief into. After some dialogue and a fight, he is killed. John has never killed a Spartan before… but then again, Andre insisted that he was not a Spartan.
Clarke and Winters return to being Spartans once more, with Winters having a lot of burdens on his shoulders. The two of them will continue their hunting duties, only now since they have trained with The Spartan Killers of The Banished, they know who to target and how they think and fight. Master Chief then resumes his original task of the main storyline.
I could see this being the plot of either a mini-campaign DLC side-story or a small novel similar in size to Halo Bad Blood. Just something to add a bit more flair to the story of Halo Infinite between Part 1 and Part 2.
Personally, I think a mini-campaign would be better as it would give us more gameplay and some new fun characters to interact with. Not everyone likes to have books, as it seems only 10% of the fanbase actually reads them and 343 seems to have a notion that the books are required to understand the stories of the games. And as for the development of this mini-campaign, the landscape is already available. The devs can finish up the inaccessible islands to the North-East of the map and give us some new objectives both there and on the main islands featured in the main story.
PLUS as a bonus, this hypothetical mini-campaign would be littered with Armor Lockers that let us unlock some armor pieces and skins for the new GLADIATOR Armor Core that would be made available in multiplayer. An Armor Core that is a hybrid of Human and Banished engineering.
What do you guys think?