Ninth Watchtower of August Attendance

The Ninth Watchtower of August Attendance was an old Covenant orbital space station formerly situated over the remote planet Atropos. The station was at various points in its history abandoned and then later used as the site for the exile of members of the Governors of Contrition, coming to serve as the home for the Minister of Aretalogy Kanto'Boreft in the postwar era.

Overview

The Ninth Watchtower was an old Covenant station of archaic design, and carried a citadel, possibly as part of its superstructure. Between October 2556 and 2559 the station was disassembled, and its citadel moved to the ground on Atropos to serve as a hub for a Flood-infested base.

History

At the time of its construction in an "archaic" era of the Covenant, the Ninth Watchower was situated over a minor unnamed world of little importance save for the destroyed orbital filaments that formed two distinct debris rings about it. The station was originally placed here due to the Covenant's inability to identify one of the materials found in the debris fields, though was later abandoned. The world the station orbited later became home to a population of human pirates that remained stranded there throughout the Human-Covenant War, who named the planet Atropos. After the Battle of Installation 04 late in the war, the station became home to Kanto'Boreft, a prominent member of the Governors of Contrition, as part of the governors' exile to far-flung outposts on the periphery of Covenant space to deny them political influence in the wake of the catastrophic Flood outbreak on Installation 04. This exile ironically saved the station's crew from being assimilated by the Flood during the Fall of High Charity weeks later.

For the next three years between early 2553 and late 2556, Kanto'Boreft continued to file reports from the watchtower, though remained unaware of whether any central imperial authority even remained to receive them. This continued until October 2556, when a hijacked Condor dropship fleeing a catastrophic Flood outbreak at Site 22 in the Marcey system arrived at Atropos and crashed on the planet. After cursory scans confirmed the presence of the Flood, Boreft ordered the station be deconstructed and moved to the ground, with the citadel it carried being rebuilt to now serve as a hive for the parasite cultivated by the Governors. It was ultimately from this site that the Flood outbreak on Atropos began in April 2560.

List of appearances

• Halo: Ascension on Atropos (First mentioned)