: Well, I said I would get back soon, but then nephews happened. My apologies.
: So. For the past two years, I've been working on a Halo fanfic called
: "Not All Who Wander". It all started out as a joke on the old
: Archive forums about how cool a Covenant version of Firefly could be, but
: then I realized that was a really cool idea. So I got to work dreaming
: and, when I had the spare time, writing. And I've just begun writing and
: posting it in earnest.

: This story is not about Truth, or the Master Chief, or the Arbiter, or
: Tartarus. It's not about the grand political maneuverings or the
: large-scale battles of Halo. It's about a Jackal named Quatch, a veteran
: of the Human-Covenant War who has since become a merchant sailor. He and
: his crew were stranded on High Charity on the first day of the Great
: Schism. The story follows them on that first day and the aftermath as they
: band together with other people who have been cast adrift by the fall of
: the Covenant Empire.

: The story can be found on Fanfiction.net, Spacebattles, or over at the new
: Halo Archive forums. I've been trying to maintain a weekly posting
: schedule, but I've slipped this week and I'm currently a day late on
: Chapter 5.

: Spacebattles link

: Fanfiction.net link

: Halo Archive link

: Archillen has been a wonderful sounding board for some of my ideas, and I've
: found myself borrowing a great many of his ideas as well. He calls this
: collaborative effort Project: Daybreak, and I think that's a wonderful
: name myself.

: He's also a talented artist, and I've been fortunate enough to commission an
: awesome artwork of the ship Quatch will soon be stealing. This is my
: Serenity , the Parhelia , and she is beautiful. Check out Archillen's
: Deviantart page , and be sure to check out the full-sized image. There's
: so much detail in there, it's amazing!

:

: The Qwis-109* Parhelia is a mid-tonnage civilian freighter, formerly the
: property of Umtalla merchant clan.

: ​
: She came into being when Quantol Mercantile Concerns contracted the Aanrar
: shipyards to construct seventeen Timely Sirocco-class freighters. The
: Quantol clan was audited not long after by the secular government of their
: homeworld, and the resulting fines nearly bankrupted the clan. The Aanrar
: shipbuilders halted construction on the Quantol order, and when it was
: clear that further payments would not be received from Q-M-C, all but one
: of the airframes was scrapped. The last one, nearly completed, languished
: in a corner of the shipyard for six years (Sanghelios calendar) before it
: caught the eye of a scion of the Umtalla clan.

: ​
: An apt epithet for the Umtalla clan would be "merchant princes",
: and Rael 'Umtalla was no exception. He was, in fact, an exemplar. He had a
: heart full of wanderlust and a love for fine living unmatched by most of
: his kin. He loved sports more than he loved profits; a hunter, a racer,
: and a diver. It was only his talent for bringing home more profit than
: he'd spent that saved him from the clan elders' censure. And in the
: abandoned airframe, Rael saw the potential for something unconventional.

: ​
: Due to their open-frame design, Timely Sirocco-class freighters weigh only an
: eighth of the lightship tonnage typical for a vessel of their length and
: beam. Yet they can mount engines larger than would be typical of their
: tonnage. This marriage of light weight and powerful engines makes the
: Timely Sirocco class a popular choice for blockade runners, and Rael
: resolved to build a runner par excellence.

: ​
: At his direction, the Aanrar shipbuilders trimmed the airframe, lengthened
: it, and then laid it into a very robust keel. He acquired the best engines
: and the finest reactor that money could buy in the twentieth Age of
: Discovery. Better than that even; it's not known for sure how Rael
: 'Umtalla got his hands on engines meant for a Ministry courrier ship, but
: his paperwork was evidently in order and the artisans of Aanrar dutifully
: installed them. The Parhelia was to be a very fast vessel indeed.

: ​
: When it came to armament and defense, Rael was faced with hard decisions. It
: is utterly unthinkable for a Sangheili noble to travel unarmed, but Rael
: loathe to install the four batteries of fleet but heavy plasma cannons
: typical of the Timely Sirocco vessels owned by the Umtalla clan. Instead,
: he opted for a pair of plasma cannons designed for bomber craft. These are
: well-suited for fending off strike craft and blasting apart incoming
: asteroids, passable for a mid-sized freighter in a well-policed region of
: the Covenant empire, but laughably inadequate for the personal vessel of
: an Umtalla scion. Rael's heirs would later mount the weapons on a
: retractable armature, reasoning that the Parhelia would be better off
: apparently disarmed instead of conspicuously underarmed.

: ​
: Rael was less sanguine about the shield systems. He knew that any compromise
: in weight would be a compromise in the shield's strength or the structural
: integrity of the mounts. He also planned to race the Parhelia in the Grand
: Cup of the Rhything Fjords, a low-atmosphere airship race on Skagit known
: for its foul weather and precarious rock formations. Any sacrifice of
: shield strength was out of the question. And what good is a strong shield
: if the hullplate beneath it will buckle from the first impact?

: ​
: The final piece was taken from Rael's past. It was a slipspace engine taken
: from the heart of The Pugilist, a pirate ship that had plagued the
: Umtalla's freighters. The pirates' fortunes came to an end the day they
: attacked Rael's convoy, though it took all of Rael's considerable skill to
: run the pirates to ground in his convoy escort. To his dying days, he
: would tell anyone who listened of the harrowing chase through the rocky
: plains of a lifeless world, and the spectacular crash when the pirates, in
: desperation, swung their ship around to bring their weapons to bear on
: their pursuer and plowed into a cliff. There was only one survivor: the
: second mate who crawled from the wreckage and challenged Rael to a duel.
: It was a good chase, he remembered, and a good fight.

: ​
: The consternation of the Umtalla elders cannot be overstated when he returned
: from Sanghelios with a racing yacht instead of a proper freighter, but
: Rael paid for the construction with his own account, and with the
: Parhelia's considerable cargo space, his expeditions could conceivably be
: written off as business trips. Rael 'Umtalla was soon winning one race
: after another at the helm of the Parhelia, which is no small feat
: considering that it was often the largest contender by far. Legends of the
: rust-red Timely Sirocco are still told in the racing circles of the
: Kantuon Edict Primary Domain, and even now a number of sky-jockeys attempt
: to recreate the Parhelia's success. Such freighters-turned-racers are
: colloquially known as "Second-Sundogs".

: ​
: Rael 'Umtalla's long life utterly defies any expectations one might draw from
: his lifestyle or his love of near-death experiences, but with him died the
: Parhelia's winning streak. The freighter is a beast to handle at high
: speeds, and the engine booms tend to wobble during tight turns. It took
: Rael years of effort to master the Parhelia, and he eventually learned how
: to squeeze even more agility out of the flexing airframe. But he was alone
: in this endeavor, and to this day he is the only one who ever dared to
: race the Parhelia in atmosphere. His heirs were content to drive it in
: deep space races, but eventually they moved on to other ships. The
: Parhelia spent much of much of the time since his death in storage aboard
: High Charity, waiting for a scion to unlock its potential or for a buyer
: to meet the Umtalla clan's high demands.

: ​
: But the legend lives on. The Parhelia should have been lost with High Charity
: at the outbreak of the Great Schism, when the Parasite took the mendicant
: city and corrupted it to the core. But several years later, the old racer
: limped down the Pleiades Corridor and returned to the territory of the
: Covenant empire. It was battered and worn, captained by a common-born
: Kig-Yar shipmaster who commands the most unlikely assortment of the lower
: castes. How this came to happen, and why the Umtalla clan have not
: reclaimed their property, is as yet a mystery.

It’s late and I must to bed but I just thought I’d have a quick look to see if you’d updated. I’m glad I did 😀