The year is 2552. Planet Earth still exists, but overpopulation has forced many of her former residents to colonize other worlds. Faster-than-light travel is now a reality, and Earth's unified government, through the United Nations Space Command, has put its full weight behind the colonization effort; millions of humans now live on habitable planets in other solar systems. A keystone of humanity's colonization efforts is the planet Reach, an interstellar naval yard that builds colony ships for civilians and warships for the UNSC's armed forces. Conveniently close to Earth, Reach is also a hub of scientific and military activity.
Thirty-two years ago, contact with the outer colony Harvest was lost. A battlegroup sent to investigate was almost completely destroyed; only one badly damaged ship returned to Reach. Its crew told of a seemingly unstoppable alien warship that had effortlessly annihilated their forces.
This was humankind's first encounter with a group of aliens they eventually came to know as the Covenant, a collective of alien races united in their fanatical religious devotion. Covenant religious elders declared humanity an affront to the gods, and the Covenant warrior caste waged a holy war upon humanity with gruesome diligence.
After a series of crushing defeats and obliterated colonies, UNSC Admiral Preston Cole established the Cole Protocol: no vessel may inadvertently lead the Covenant to Earth. When forced to withdraw, ships must avoid Earth-bound vectors -- even if that means jumping without proper navigational calculations. Vessels in danger of capture must self-destruct.
On Reach, a secret military project to create cyborg super-soldiers takes on newfound importance. The soldiers of the SPARTAN-II project rack up an impressive record against the Covenant in test deployments, but there are too few of them to turn the tide of the war.
Existing SPARTAN-II soldiers are recalled to Reach for further augmentation. The plan: board a Covenant vessel with the improved SPARTAN-IIs and learn the location of the Covenant home world. Two days before the mission begins, Covenant forces strike Reach and annihilate the colony. The Covenant are now on Eath's doorstep. One ship, the Pillar of Autumn, escapes with the last SPARTAN-II and makes a blind jump into deep space, hoping to lead the Covenant away from Earth.
The crew of Pillar of Autumn
The Pillar of Autumn is a Halcyon-class warship that has seen decades of service. This ship is able to escape the devestating attacks of the covenanat int o a mystirious world called Halo.
THE CREW:
Captain Jacob Keyes- Captain of the Pillar of Autumn
The Marines-Soldiers in the ship who fight the covenant. They are the best of the best but they are only human
Cortana- Highly advanced AI who is the heart of the Pillar of Autumn. If she gets captured Earth is destroyed
The Master Chieg- Last survivor of the SPARTAN project
The Covenant
The Covenant forces have spent more than thirty years trying to wipe out humankind. Because their effort have been so successful, and because few Covenant troops have ever been captured alive, little is definitively known about their origins, society, or motivations. Intercepted communications and battlefield reports indicate a religious underpinning to their genocidal campaign. What follows are brief descriptions of the alien races known to belong to the Covenant collective, gathered mostly from encounters on the battlefield.
Types of covenants:
Approximately 5' tall and relatively weak, Grunts tend to travel in packs and stick close to more powerful allies. Individually they are easy to defeat, but in groups they can overwhelm careless Marines. Their armor seems to house some sort of life-support mechanism. They are known to use a variety of weapons, including the plasma pistol, plasma rifle, and plasma grenades.
With superior senses of sight, hearing, and smell, Jackals serve as scouts and assassins for the Covenant forces. They use plasma pistols and carry a strong energy shield to compensate for their physical weakness; a well-positioned Jackal can hold his own against several Marines, though grenades are effective against them. They stand approximately 5'8" tall.
In contagious spore form, the Flood is more than capable of sucking your shields down to zero - and your health shortly thereafter - if enough are present. In combat form, they're deadly...and ugly. Physically more powerful than their mutant form might suggest, and possessed of nothing so much as a compulsion to spread the disease.
Hunters stand 12' tall, though in their combat state they contract to approximately eight feet. Hunters fight with a fuel rod gun integrated directly into their armor. They carry an enormous and nearly impervious metal shielf made of an unknown alloy, which they sometimes use as a melee weapon.
There are a few varieties of the Elite, but all are roughly 8'6" tall and incredibly strong. Their strength allows them to rely on brute force when necessary, but they're quite capable of brilliant battlefield tactics as well. Their natural resilience is augmented with full-body energy shielding which recharges when depleted. They wield plasma pistols, plasma rifles, grenades, and needlers
