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UNSC Pillar of Autumn

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UNSC Pillar of Autumn
The Pillar of Autumn.jpg
Production information

Manufacturer:

Reyes-McLees Shipyards

Class:

Halcyon-class Cruiser

Role:

Warship, Special Operations

Specifications

Length:

1170 meters

Width:

352 meters

Height:

414 meters

Powerplant:

Four fusion reactors

Engine:

Fusion drive

Slipspace drive:

Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine

Hull:

2 meter thick battle plate

Countermeasures:

Emergency thrusters (port/starboard)

Armament:

Complement:

Crew:

Service information

Last sighted:

September 22, 2552

Destroyed:

Battle of Installation 04

Participated battles:

Battle of Reach, Battle of Installation 04

Fleet:

Unknown

Known commanders:

Captain Jacob Keyes, Cortana

Affiliation:

United Nations Space Command

 
Looking for "Pillar of Autumn," the level? Click here.

The UNSC Pillar of Autumn was a Halcyon-class Cruiser. Informally, she was simple referred to as the Autumn, and informally abbreviated as the "PoA".

History

A close up of the ship.

Mothballed and due to be scrapped like the remainder of the Halcyon-class cruisers, the Autumn was brought back into active duty during the Human-Covenant War. Under the command of Captain Jacob Keyes, she was to serve as an inconspicuous launch pad, for a covert offensive involving locating the Covenant homeworld and capture of Covenant leadership by SPARTAN-II Super soldiers and received a refit to prepare her for the upcoming mission. The refit rectified a number of deficiencies in the original design and made her a competitive re-addition to the sorely pressed UNSC Navy. At the time of her destruction in 2552 she was 43 years old.[2]

A vessel, identified to be the Pillar of Autumn, pushes through the Covenant blockade and escapes Reach.

The Pillar of Autumn was ultimately unable to embark on the aforementioned operation due to the UNSC defeat at the Battle of Reach and was one of the few ships to escape the disaster, albeit with moderate damage and the loss of a third of its tech staff. Although the Cole Protocol demanded a random Slipstream jump, the AI Cortana, without the knowledge of the crew, purposely guided the ship to the planet Threshold based on map coordinates extracted from a Forerunner artifact.[3] The result was the discovery of Installation 04, or "Halo".

File:Pillar.jpg
The Pillar of Autumn taking plasma impacts at the Battle of Installation 04.

A brief and uneven battle against a Covenant battle group of a dozen superior CCS-class Battlecruisers then occured in near-Threshold space. The orbital battle resulted in critical damage being inflicted upon the Pillar of Autumn. Enemy boarding parties disabled the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon's fire control with a demolition charge, but not before she made a good account of herself by destroying four enemy warships and damaging several others. The Pillar of Autumn's survival against superior forces was due in part to a Prophet's directive to disable, rather than destroy her, out of fear that her destruction might damage Halo, which had religious significance to the Covenant. Before setting an "emergency-landing," the Autumn released its cryo tubes into space. The ship was then crash landed onto Halo by one of Cortana's subroutines. The vessel, damaged beyond repair, tore a deep gash in the ground for several hundred meters, bounced, then came to rest upright and balanced over a cliff on a barren peninsula.[4]

Prior to the crash, much of her crew had taken to the escape pods, including Cortana who was being carried within the Master Chief's suit. Others evacuated by Pelican dropship or even in drop pods, as was the case for a complement of ODSTs. Despite the confusion most of the crew survived, to reach Halo and engage Covenant ground forces.

Later, the surviving Pelicans were employed to retrieve munitions from the crashed ship to sustain this effort. The human forces successfully neutralized the Covenant vehicles and some of the infantry stationed at the crash site and retrieved weaponry and vehicles to use in their guerrilla war against the Covenant.

Despite the abuse sustained during the space battle and the following crash the Pillar of Autumn remained intact, and was subsequently occupied by investigating Covenant forces and later by Flood. The threat posed by the latter was deemed sufficiently great for ODST Major Silva to give SPARTAN-117 and Cortana to detonate the ship's still-functioning fusion power cores in a bid to destroy Halo, thus preventing the Flood from escaping.

Having manually triggered a destabilization of the power cores after an intervention by the AI 343 Guilty Spark halted the remote detonation, SPARTAN-117 and Cortana commandeered a Longsword from one of the Pillar of Autumn's docking bays and achieved a safe minimum distance before the ship exploded, causing the ring-world to fall apart. According to Doctor Halsey its memory would live on on for years to come.[5]

Upgraded Specifications

The refit Pillar of Autumn
POA-Full-Int-Ext.jpg
POA-Full-Int-Ext-pers2.jpg

Power Plant

The Pillar of Autumn was refitted with an improved nuclear fusion engine that featured two smaller reactors around a larger one, capable of boosting power out by 300%. An upgraded cooling system was also retrofitted, featuring "a laser-induced optical slurry of ions chilled to near-absolute zero" that removed the reliance on expendable chemical temperature-control agents. In essence, the new system provided increased waste heat removal as power output increased. This self-regulating and self-cooling system was critical in combat since it virtually eliminated a commander's concerns about overheating and slagging a ship's engines.

Armament

The upgraded Pillar of Autumn received several refits, including several to its weapons systems. Eventually, it was host to a very powerful armament.

  • One MAC Cannon which was capable of firing three consecutive shots on one charge, each round weighing 600 tons.
  • 300 Archer Missile Pods which were arranged in thirty columns and ten rows. Each pod contained 26 individual devices, equaling 7800 missiles[6].
  • Four Shiva Nuclear Warheads, one of which is loaded on a remote-controlled Longsword interceptor.
  • Forty 50mm MLA Auto-cannons with overlapping fields of fire for point defense against single ships. These cannons were later scavenged by the surviving humans on Installation 04 for Alpha Base.
  • Three HAVOK Nuclear Warheads.

It is quite curious that this ship would be given so many powerful weapons. A nuke inside of a ship's shielding would effectively destroy it. While effective for destroying a Covenant ship, the mission the Pillar of Autumn was designed for was to help the SPARTAN-IIs "disable" a Covenant ship to be commandeered, not destroyed. However, since the Autumn was going on this mission alone, it needed plenty of firepower.

Engine Room

The Pillar of Autumn's engine room, or just "Engineering", was a large, three-deck high chamber allowing access to the fusion engine core. Side passages allowed for movement from the bottom deck all the way up to the catwalks on the third. The manifolds into the cores were suspended above the second deck. Controls on the third retracted these manifolds, exposing a vent that led directly into the core. It was using this method to expose the core via the vents that the Master Chief ultimately destroyed the ship and "Halo". This room is the largest room in the Pillar of Autumn with the exception of the hanger bay and the "Leap of Faith" room.

File:Pillar2.jpg
The Pillar of Autumn
Cortana, the AI, found aboard the PoA
File:Halo-14.jpg
The crashed Autumn in the Desert of Halo, seen in the level The Maw
File:Pistola.jpg
Crewmembers in the "Autumn"

Airlocks

Airlock 31: The Lifeboat of this airlock was destroyed by the Covenant to make way for a Boarding Craft.
Airlock 32: The Lifeboat of this airlock was destroyed by the Covenant to make way for a Boarding Craft.
Airlock 51: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel, but was destroyed by unseen Covenant artillery.
Airlock 52: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel.
Airlock 53: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel.
Airlock 61: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel with the Master Chief, Cortana and 9 other Marines onboard.
Airlock 62: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel.
Airlock 63: The Lifeboat of this airlock managed to make it out of the vessel.


Known Crew

Pillar of Autumn Command Crew

Other Naval Personnel

Marines and ODSTs

Individuals

Units

Others

Trivia

The Bulletin Board
  • The Pillar of Autumn is approximately 1.17 km long. [1] This, however, contradicts the final level of Halo: Combat Evolved where the player must drive along a 3 km long service corridor that supposedly runs the length of the ship. This was probably for generating the tension and atmosphere necessary for the level. It is also possible that due to the many twists and turns, the service corridor is stretched along several levels of the ship, making it possible for it to be that long. This is also the Master Chief's serial number.
  • The Marathon logo is prominently displayed on the Pillar of Autumn's starboard and port sides. The ship's official emblem has the Marathon logo as well.
  • The bulletin board just outside the bridge of the ship contains a number of amusing clips, some throwbacks to Marathon. These can be examined on the first level of Halo: Combat Evolved.
  • The words Pillar of Autumn can be seen on the exterior of the ship at the bow.
  • In the trench run in the final part of the game Master Chief drives a Warthog through a Class 7 Service Corridor. This might be another reference to 7.
  • The bulletin board has a flier for a missing cat called Jonesy. This is a reference to the Alien movies, where the cat's name was Jonesy.
  • On the bulletin board on the Pillar of Autumn, there is an ad for a missing cat, this can also be seen in Crows Nest and High Ground which meant the owner probably survived the fight of Installation 04 (Alpha Halo). The cat probably died though, as it is highly unlikely for a cat to survive for so long in hostile conditions.
  • In reference to Halo: The Flood, when Master Chief is to escape after blowing the engines of the Autumn, the Grunt Yayap said to his superior that he will need to escape Exit E-117. 117 is another reference to Master Chief's number John-117.
  • The Pillar of Autumn mess-hall offered a choice between turkey, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, meatloaf, and a dish named Chef's Special. Beverages included cola, water, lemon/lime, lemonade, root beer, coffee, orange juice, hot tea, hot chocolate, iced tea, and Chef's Surprise.
  • The Pillar of Autumn was capable of reaching sub-light speeds of 1,454 meters-per-second.
  • While The Fall of Reach mentioned the Autumn having a command chair, in Halo: Combat Evolved, such a chair is not seen.
  • In cutscenes, the Pillar of Autumn never moves, it is just a piece of BSP geometry. However, the cameras moved in a way that would seem like it moved.
  • For a ship of its size, the Autumn's bridge is strangely undersized, and is placed in a tactically poor position.
  • The Pillar of Autumn and other Halcyon Class Cruisers bear resemblance to the newer Marathon-class Cruiser.
  • The Pillar of Autumn is escorted by at least eleven Longswords.[7]
  • Crewman 1 is voiced by former Bungie employee Matt Soell.
  • There are only nine cryo-chambers in Cryo B, but there is room for nineteen more.
  • In Halo: The Flood Cryo B is said to contain hundreds of cryo-chambers
  • Although the auto-cannons were removed in Halo: The Flood, they are still visible in cutscenes set after the human raid. [8]
  • On the port hull of the Pillar of Autumn, imprinted upon a circular node is the Marathon logo. It can be seen during the cut scene where the Master Chief exits via Escape Pod.
  • On page 238 in Halo: The Fall of Reach, it is stated that the only noteworthy design feature of the Pillar of Autumn (before the refit) is the frame.
  • The Autumn might be the most famous ship in the entired Halo universe.
  • In all 3 Halo games, the main UNSC ship becomes severely damaged (In Amber Clad, Forward unto Dawn) or blown up (Pillar of Autumn).

Sources

  1. ^ Halo: The Flood, page 136
  2. ^ Halo: The Fall of Reach, page 238, paragraph 4: The Pillar of Autumn is forty-three years old," Cortana said. "Halcyon-class ships were the smallest vessel ever to receive the cruiser designation. It is approximately one-third the tonnage of the Marathon-class cruiser currently in service."
  3. ^ Halo: The Fall of Reach, Epilogue
  4. ^ Halo: The Flood
  5. ^ Ghosts of Onyx
  6. ^ Halo: The Fall of Reach, pages 274-275 Captain Keyes mentions performing a fly-by inspection of the starboard shuttle bay and counting Archer Missile Pods thirty across and ten down, making for 300 Archer Missile Pods. The next sentence then reads "Each pod held dozens of missiles." The count of 128 Archer Missile Pods with 30 missiles each must be a severe under-estimation of the ship's missile payload.
  7. ^ Pillar of Autumn, first cutscene
  8. ^ "And the Horse You Rode On", The Maw, Halo: Combat Evolved
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