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| *Long* | |
| Posted By: Roger Wilco <jordan@edelldesigns.com> | Date: 4/29/03 3:39 p.m. |
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Just some miscellaneous thoughts and musings regarding the Truth & ' Reconciliation's design. The power of observation. Sometimes I just don't pick up on things very quick. For instance, while playing through 'Keyes' the other day I noticed for the first time that the T&R was disabled beyond the internal fires and coolant leaks...it's actually resting on the mesa, crashed and grounded. This was probably patently obvious to most of you but I just never noticed. Like I said, I'm kinda slow that way sometimes. Wait, do I have this right? When you leave the T&R via Banshee it looks as if you are high above the ground but when you enter via the gravlift it certainly looks as if the T&R is grounded...as based on the fact that the gravlift and the shuttle bays seem to be on roughly the same level. This brings me to that rather large hole in the hull...I wonder if it was caused by this impact. (Scratch that...after reading the transcript again, Coratna says "This hole was caused by some kind of explosive.") As Cortana states, it would require quite a bit of force to punch a hole that large in the T&R. Who could have pulled that off? The Marines don't have the firepower. The Flood only have access to the weapons of those they are fighting and presumably wouldn't want to hurt a ship that bad if they wanted to use it to get off Halo. (Cortana again, "The Flood overwhelmed this cruiser and disabled it. The Covenant are terrified the Flood will repair the ship and use it to escape from Halo.") Why would the Flood disable a ship they overwhelmed only to have to repair it? Spark? He most likely would have the means somewhere in his bag of Forerunner gadgetry but has no motive. The hidden forces behind the scenes? Perhaps, without knowing anything about them though it is hard to say if they even could. Maybe they are the nefarious type and want the Flood to escape and disabled the T&R to allow the Flood a chance. The only other possibility is that it was an accident, an internal explosion. There is the possibility that Cortana had something to do with it...by hacking the T&R's systems and causing an overload or something along those lines. Again, I don't see the motive, even if she is a little daft. Location, location, location. Although the topography is very similar I was wondering if this is the same area in both T&R and Keyes. The gravlift winds up in a different place relative to the ground but that could be from the crash. In T&R the cruiser looks to be almost straddling a large (and tall) mesa...if it had simply fallen from the sky you would expect that part of the ship would be on the mesa and the rest in the valley below. That Would have been quite a site. In Keyes, the canyons look as if they were carved by water...very similar in appearance to ones found near Lake Powell. This hints at a lower elevation, at least in relation to the mesa of T&R. While both levels are probably in the same geographic neighborhood I would hazard a guess the the Truth & Reconciliation's final resting place is essentially in the dried river bed of an ancient (albeit artificial) canyon. Once onboard the T&R, you travel laterally, for the most part, to one of her many shuttle bays. From there it is up at least three levels to the brigs and bridge. This would put them rather deep within the superstructure of the ship. I have never quite understood the Human propensity for placing the bridge at the uppermost or forward most (or sometimes both) part of a ship. To compound the vulnerability of putting the command suite on the outside of a ship, we will usually install a large array of plate glass windows so we can see the ocean or stars or whatever. This seems like a fantastic way to lose your entire command crew in the flash of one well placed shot. The PoA is no exception, and certainly neither is the Enterprise. Why the Romulans and Klingons always seem to go straight for the engines instead of the Bridge is beyond me. You see this a lot in sci-fi ship design...a huge, fearsome capital ship, festooned with horrible weaponry and at the point farthest away from the center of the ship, out in the open almost is the captain and his officers just begging for a pop in the nose. Given the technology of today even, it seems far more practical to bury the bridge deep inside the ship. I realize the many modern warships DO have secondary bridges and war-rooms...even the Enterprise has one. Does the PoA? Seems the Covies got it right on this one IMO. Speaking of where what is located...why is Cortana so confused as to where a shuttle bay is supposed to be? I realize she may be a little flustered by her time in the core and that the Covenant battlenet is a mess but does she simply not remember? Bad memory address? It's the same ship, same gravlift...would it not be, more or less, the same path to the shuttle bay and then on to the bridge as last time you were here? Chill out. A word or two about coolant. There sure is a lot of it. That's about it really except to say that whatever the T&R's power source it must generate a fantastic amount of waste heat. This might prove to be a nice bit of intel and could provide an avenue of attack for the UNSC. Beam me up. I'm curious as to mechanics of the gravlift. In T&R there is that platform that forms the base of the lift. I figured that this was part of the machinery, perhaps attached to the hull and then lowered into position by the lift for use as a staging area but also maybe as an amplifier or reflector. In Keyes that piece is not there yet the lift still functions...perhaps is a matter of range or more likely weight. The gravlift seems to be the primary, if not the only way of getting heavy equipment (Wraiths, Ghosts and Shades) and Hunters down to the surface. The gravlift room is connected via four large doors and passageways to, assumedly, four large 'motor pool' rooms where Wraiths and Ghosts are stored. They drive up the ramps, onto the lift and down they go. I'm not quite sure how they move Shades around...it would be cool if they walked. Everybody else rides the dropships for the most part. Given the amount of Covenant armor deployed on Halo I'm wondering where it all came from? It is possible that it is entirely from the T&R but certainly not from it's current location. There would be no way to drive a Wraith through those canyons and even if you did how would you get it off the mesa. This would mean that the T&R, or other cruisers would have to come in low to the surface (300 meters was it?) and hover for as long as it takes to offload. This seems a precarious position for ones cruisers, vulnerable to attack from both the air and ground. The Fleet at Halo may just be making do with what they have and perhaps there are types of ships we have not seen that usually handle this sort of duty. Given the T&R's architecture (as mentioned above) I don't think so though. This also does not bode well for AotCR being underground. The color purple. Purple has long been associated with royalty and authority...from the courts of ancient Kings to the vestments of modern religious practice. It has even been co-opted by artists such as Prince ( the artist formally known as, but currently known as some weird androgynous symbol.) The Covenant adoption of purple as their official color is telling. I am going to assume that this has Human-relevant meaning on the part of the designers since in reality it is a cultural thing...the Covenant, being alien might easily associate purple with a vastly different meaning. I mean to say that I am going on the assumption that the Covenant see purple as a regal, possibly sacred color as do many cultures here on Earth. The color purple gets it name from the Greeks who used it to describe a certain people of the ancient world, the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians got this moniker from a particular dye they manufactured from a certain mollusk harvested along what is now the Lebanon coast. The Phoenicians, or 'Purple People' were traders, sailors and explorers and they sold this dye primarily to the powers that were, all over the Mediterranean and the Fertile Crescent. Unlike many of the other cultures of the times they were not an agricultural society. Their cities eventually dotted much of the Mediterranean coastline...from Marseilles and Malta to the North of Africa and the crown jewel of their burgeoning empire, Carthage. (Btw, the words 'purple' and 'phoenix' [that other Bungie game] share the same root. Hmmmm.) The Phoenicians are primarily remembered for two things other than their coveted purple dye, their prowess in naval ship design and they are generally credited with the invention of the Alphabet. Being sailors and traders, Phoenician ships were fast, rugged, dependable and the envy of, and the bane of their enemies. This description fits the Truth & Reconciliation rather well I think. As for being inventors of the Alphabet there is some controversy on the matter. While some ancient Greek writings attribute their early alphabet as coming to them from Phoenicia, some modern scholars think it more likely that it came to the Phoenicians by way of the Canninites or the early Hebrews. The Phoenicians built and filled many a library with their writings and trade records but very little of it remains. Although a formidable power, (the great general Hannibal was from the city of Carthage) the Phoenicians were ultimately no match for the Romans to the North. Over the course of three wars in the first and second centuries BC, the Romans sold the conquered Phoenicians into slavery and leveled their cities, including burning the great library at Carthage to the ground. The Alphabet, like Cuneiform and Hieroglyphics before it got passed around quite a bit...being absorbed and reformulated by the cultures of the early world. The Alphabet, unlike the earlier forms of icon based writings changed the world as we know it and truly laid down the foundation for the whole of Western civilization. It allowed for the dissemination of written Laws and codes of conduct (both religious and social) because it was simple and easy to learn. By definition an alphabet is any form of writing consisting of less than 30 characters...unlike preceding forms of writing which could contain hundreds, if not thousands of pictographs. No longer would there be a literate aristocracy ruling over an illiterate populace. The alphabet is the basis on which all of Western cultures greatest achievements are founded, Science, the Arts and the Rule of Law. But let's not forget that it is also provided a vector for the mass consumption of religious doctrine in the form of the Ten Commandments, the Bible, Torah, and Koran. The point of which is this (finally)...I find it very curious that onboard the T&R, and across the various Covenant species, with the possible exception of the Elites, there is little to no writing. While wandering about the Truth & Reconciliation I can come up with but a handful of symbols that seem to have any recognizable purpose. One is in the gravlift room, only on one of the walls jutting out from between two of the large cargo doors. It has four circles arrayed in a 'x' around a central shape. For lack of a better explanation it looks like a diagram of the four cargo bays connected to the central gravlift room. There doesn't seem to be any writing on it but similar shapes/patterns appear on the bridge control panels. The only other symbol that is immediately obvious is the one on all of the doors. Without knowing anything of Covenant writing, if there is any it is hard to say if this symbol is an abstract form...part of an alphabet, or a pictograph of some sort. It is however drastically different that the symbols on the Elites and therefore I would guess from another language entirely. Since it appears on every door I could only hazard a tentative guess as to its meaning. It is maybe the name of the ship, or a symbol corresponding to that particular section of the ship...or perhaps it is simply the Covennant word for door. I find all of this interesting especially in comparison to a Human vessel like the Pillar of Autumn. The passageways and various sections of the PoA are all clearly marked with labels and icons. From the controls on the Bridge to the vending machines in the Galley, everything has a label on it. Any greenhorn just assigned to the PoA could find his way to the escape pods, the stairs or the armory. How would a newly recruited grunt know one end of the T&R from the other? This makes me wonder if the lower classes of Covenant society are even literate. The power implicit in an easily accessible alphabet is that it bestows equal power and knowledge on all those who learn it. For example, it was, and still is one of the most basic tenets of Semitic culture that ALL should know God by READING His word...the Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony marks a persons passage into adulthood with the seminal event of reading from the Torah. The average persons ability to actively partake in the wisdom and glory of the almighty, to read the Torah, the Bible or the Koran maybe the most important factor in the meteoric rise of these religions. The rise of the alphabet as the primary form of written language brought with it a tremendous shift in power. No longer was the Divine knowledge and will of the God(s) solely in the hands of the elite and the prophets...it was laid out for all disciples to know and interpret. Knowledge is power. The Grunts, Jackals and Hunters seem to function as a sort of Proletariat for the Elites and Prophets. While they may be holding something over on the lower classes that keeps them in line it certainly wouldn't hurt if they were kept ignorant. I also wonder how advanced these under-class species were on their own. I have always thought of the Hunters as big, fierce but not-so-bright beasts with fuel rod cannons attached to their arms. Perhaps the Grunts and Jackals were rather simple creatures, mesmerized by the Prophets high-techery and pressed into service for a cause they can never fully understand. I looked through the scans of the upcoming OXM magazine, I am not ashamed. I will absolutely buy it when it hits the stands. In the meantime, notice the render of the Prophet...he bears the same sort of markings found on the Elites. Perhaps evidence that they, and only they share this common language. Prayer pimples for hairy fishnuts. For an alliance of religious zealots set on the eradication of mankind there seems to be little, if any paraphernalia reflecting this bent. No idols or icons, no places of worship, not even a propaganda poster. "Uncle Zph't Wants You!" Nothing. Now granted, the Truth & Reconciliation is a huge ship and we see very little of it. What we do see though is central to it's functionality as a ship of war. The Bridge, Brigs, Shuttle Bays, Gravlift and Vehicle Depots are the heart of the ship...the main centers of activity during battle. Yet there are no statues or iconography, no slogans or banners to egg on the troops...in short no positive (or negative for that matter) reinforcement of the impetus for all that activity. Sure, it is possible that we just don't see, or can't see things the Covenant can. To us, flowers just look colorful and pretty...to an insect that sees in other spectrums like UV things look vastly different. Flowers are designed to give certain visual signals to certain creatures, some flowers, when viewed in the ultra violet have what look remarkably like landing strips painted on their pedals. So maybe we just aren't equipped to see what the Covies see. Maybe there are vast portions of the rest of the ship dedicated to the worship of the Covenant gods (and food nipples.) Maybe the ship itself is a Holy artifact. As an instrument of the Gods, carrying out the will of the Gods, perhaps the Truth & Reconciliation...and all Covenant warships, and by extension the equipment contained within them (Wraiths, Ghosts, etc.) are icons of religious importance and reverence. Without knowing who or what the the Covenant believe in it is all speculation ultimately. Some have suggested that the Covenant worship the Forerunner and Halo. The Prophets headdress is certainly reminiscent of some of the structures on Halo. The symbols found on the Elites and the Prophets may be circular in design as an homage to Halo. The geometry of structure and pattern evident onboard the T&R bears a resemblance to Forerunner architecture. On this last point though there is another possibility, especially in how it relates to the lack religious images. Perhaps Covenant canon law simply does not allow it. This concept is certainly not without precedent, at least here on Earth. Consider the Ten Commandments, in particular number two: 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.' This proscription against the portrayal of God and any of his creation, the death of the image as it were, played a crucial role in the rise of the alphabet, literacy and Judeo-Christian culture. None have adhered to this edict more fervently that the Muslims. When the Moghuls (Muslim conquerors) swept into India in the middle of the last millennium they found a rather abhorrent state of affairs in the Indian arts. Hindu temples were festooned with all manner iconic carvings...plants, animals, men and women...these latter ones usually doing all manner of naughty things to one another. The Moghul kings instilled in India a strict geometric aesthetic...gone were the lavish carvings of natures bounty, replaced by decorative patterns based on the forms of mathematic reason. The lotus shaped cupolas so associated with Indian architecture, like those atop the minarets of the Taj Mahal were of Moghul design (although they most likely got it from Asia.) The geometry that adorns the inner surfaces of the Truth & Reconciliation bears much similarity to the architecture of this period in India, and by extension to a Muslim aesthetic on the whole. Greed is good. So, while sitting in traffic the other day, all of this racing around my head I wondered if maybe this whole war thing wasn't just about the money. I'm still talking about the Covenant...not Iraq. It has always struck me as at least a little bit ironic the the words 'prophet' and profit' are homonyms. What if the Covenant, like the Phoenicians, are basically capitalists, bent on building a galactic monopoly that would make the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation look like a mom-and pop hardware store. The Covenant worship not a deity in the classical sense but power in the monetary sense...or cents. They see the humans as the rival with potential competing product and have launched the most hostile of takeovers. Not even a takeover...just an outright pre-emptive crushing. You think that's thin, try this... What if the whole Halo story is an allegory for Bungies' acquisition by Microsoft. It goes a little like this: The Forerunners are the progenitors of the computer/games industry as represented by men, machines and companies such as Turing, Jobs, ENIAC, Apple, Atari and so many more I won't even try to list. One of the more nefarious members of this little science club creates a product called Microsoft (The Flood) and releases it, much to the chagrin of the others. The Flood wipe out the other Forerunners and consume the Galaxy (The Market) leaving only a few pockets of resistance stranded on fortress worlds. One of these pockets is Bungie (The UNSC/Humans) but they cannot remain immune forever. In fact they are getting dangerously close to discovering Halo and coming in direct contact with the Flood. A maniacal confederation of rabid fanboi's, holier-than-thou geeks and myopic gamers (The Covenant) vows that this cannot be allowed to happen. They would sooner destroy the Humans (Bungie) than allow them to be corrupted by the Flood (Microsoft). Major flame-wars ensue and the Covenants' (Fanbois') worst nightmares are realized when the Humans (Bungie) find Halo and are exposed to the Flood (Microsoft) which promptly begins to assimilate the UNSC (Bungie) in the form of the Keye's blob (buyout.) What none of these parties realize is that Bungie has a secret weapon, the Master Chief (You) defender of the Bungie way. The MC (You) will defeat the Covenant, crush the Flood and even knock a few Forerunner heads together if need be to achieve Bungie's true goal...world, nay Galactic domination. Remember, I said it was thin. Didn't mean to go all Hedgemony on you... Cheers, RW
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| Replies: |
| *Long* | Roger Wilco | 4/29/03 3:39 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | mnemesis | 4/29/03 3:59 p.m. |
| Mondai nai. | Finn | 4/29/03 4:01 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Wado SG | 4/29/03 4:45 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Louis Wu | 4/29/03 4:50 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Cunbelin@work | 4/29/03 5:17 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Roger Wilco | 4/29/03 5:53 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Cunbelin@work | 4/29/03 6:08 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Roger Wilco | 4/29/03 7:15 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Cunbelin@work | 4/29/03 7:21 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Roger Wilco | 4/29/03 7:23 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Cunbelin | 4/29/03 9:03 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Red Loser | 4/29/03 6:26 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Scorpion 1 | 5/4/03 10:00 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | N/A | 5/4/03 10:15 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Roger Wilco | 4/29/03 5:48 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Finn | 4/29/03 6:28 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Roger Wilco | 4/29/03 7:18 p.m. |
| Re: *Long* *SP* | Ciarán | 5/2/03 10:56 a.m. |
| Re: *Long* | Sebastian Crontooch | 5/4/03 9:27 p.m. |
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