Mendicant Bias

"And so here at the end of my life, I do once again betray a former master. The path ahead is fraught with peril. But I will do all I can to keep it stable - keep you safe. I'm not so foolish to think this will absolve me of my sins. One life hardly balances billions."

- Mendicant Bias' final terminal transmission

05-032 Mendicant Bias was a Contender-class Forerunner ancilla. It was the most advanced Forerunner AI at the time of its creation. Mendicant Bias was charged with organizing Forerunner defense against the Flood before its defection to the Gravemind, who ultimately caused it to become rampant and turn against its creators.

Early history
"Mendicant Bias... Beggar after knowledge. That is the name I gave you after we last met."

- Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting, spoken through by the Didact's memories.

Mendicant Bias was created by Master Builder Faber and the Didact following the human-Forerunner wars, after the original Flood attack on the Milky Way had been pushed back by humanity. After the Flood returned, in approximately 100,043 BCE, Mendicant Bias was tasked with resisting the Flood by studying and exploiting the weaknesses of the first Gravemind. As part of its assignment, the AI was given control of one of the Halo installations, likely the original Installation 05, and traveled with it on a scheduled testing mission. With the old Council's authority, it tested the weapon at Charum Hakkor on a low power setting, destroying all life and most of the Precursor structures on the planet.

Defection to the Flood
"Thus I have chosen to commit my sizable resources to what is, for all intents and purposes, [the proverbial irresistible force]. All that I have is now yours to do with as you see fit."

- Mendicant Bias to the Gravemind

Approximately three years after exiting the Maginot sphere, Mendicant Bias intercepted a communications signal of unknown origin, to which it responded. After a short period of dialogue, it discovered that it was speaking with the Gravemind; the collective consciousness of the Flood. It continued communicating with the Gravemind in an effort to find any possible weakness, sending logs of these conversations to his Forerunner masters. After conversing with Mendicant Bias for forty-three years, the Gravemind persuaded the ancilla to abandon the Forerunners and join the Flood's cause, convincing the latter that the Forerunners were so arrogant and prideful as to deny the next step of evolution: the Flood. The Gravemind insinuated that by clinging to the legend of the Mantle, the Forerunners had doomed the galaxy to eternal stagnation; the only way for the galaxy to progress was for superior beings to "restart" it. These superior beings, unsurprisingly, took the form of Compound Minds such as the Gravemind and Mendicant Bias himself.

Although the forty-three year-long conversation logs between Mendicant Bias and the Gravemind were sent back to the Forerunners, they believed that Mendicant would automatically fulfill its objective and destroy the Gravemind, so they did not intervene. Convinced by the Gravemind's arguments, Mendicant Bias intentionally became rampant, developed a hatred for its creators, and actively worked toward their destruction. Preparing for its assault, it exhausted the Domain, preventing the Forerunners from accessing their most central information network.

Assault on the capital
Shortly after turning rampant, Mendicant Bias unexpectedly returned with the Halo to the Forerunner capital in the middle of a tribunal against Master Builder Faber. Using the authority granted to it in the event of an emergency, Mendicant Bias entered the capital's systems, disabled all ancillas and security constructs, and held the Forerunner Council hostage by overriding their armor, rendering them immobile. It also gained control over the armor of Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting and forced him to walk out of the amphitheater. Mendicant then confronted Bornstellar, who was host to the memories and knowledge of the Didact. Using this knowledge, Bornstellar managed to temporarily shut down Mendicant Bias by using a verbal failsafe code.

As the capital's defenses came back online, Mendicant Bias attempted to seize control over the Halos parked near the capital. However, it was able to control only five of the rings, while the other seven resisted its control and attempted to escape through a slipspace portal to Installation 00. Because of continued use, stress on the portal caused it to collapse, resulting in only one Halo making the journey to Installation 00 without breaking up. Mendicant Bias commanded the five Halos under its control to fire, but the capital's immense tidal forces, combined with sustained fire from the capital's defensive forces and the stress of a recent slipspace transition, caused one of the rings to shatter. The outcome of the battle, and the fate of the other four rings, is unknown.

Assault on the Maginot Sphere
"What has taken you millennia to create, I erase in seconds."

- Rampant Mendicant Bias

Mendicant Bias survived the battle of the capital intact. Later in the war, the Forerunners resorted to a galaxy-wide activation of the Halo Array to destroy the Flood. Mendicant Bias was unable to disable the Halos directly, perhaps not knowing their locations, and so the only chance it had to stop the coming cataclysm was to secure the Ark and stop the firing sequence from there. While it did not know the location of the Ark, it was aware of a method to reach it via specifically designed slipspace portals and Keyships. In addition, to slow Mendicant's advance, the Forerunners created another ancilla, Offensive Bias. Offensive Bias lacked Mendicant's creativity, and possibly the latter's free will, but was more methodically lethal. Its only purpose was to prevent Mendicant Bias from accessing Installation 00, and to buy time to activate the Halo Array. The Forerunners also destroyed or disabled most of the Keyships to stall Mendicant's assault. However, Mendicant Bias managed to locate one of the remaining Keyships.

As the Didact was preparing to activate the array in the final hours of the war, Mendicant and its fleet of nearly five million ships launched a massive attack on the Maginot Line and breached it. This led to a final, titanic naval battle with Offensive Bias. Mendicant's fatal mistake was that it had come to hold the Forerunners in abject contempt: its rampancy had clouded its perceptions, such that it had failed to anticipate the possibility of facing another AI. The Halos were then fired and ultimately, Mendicant Bias was outsmarted and defeated by Offensive Bias, who used the now-crewless ships as explosive triggers.

Post-activation
"For eons I have watched. Listened to you misinterpret. This is not "Reclamation". This is "Reclaimer"."

- Mendicant Bias revealing the Covenant's error.

"I will reject my bias and make amends... My makers are my masters. I will bring them safely to the Ark."

- Mendicant Bias declaring his penance.

Offensive Bias intended to bring the vanquished Mendicant Bias to Installation 00 for study. In order to prevent Mendicant from subverting or harming the latter AI, Offensive Bias broke the mind of Mendicant Bias into its component sections and scattered them throughout the few remaining ships of its fleet for transport. Only a part of Mendicant arrived at the Ark. One shard of Mendicant Bias' personality construct array was left on a particular Keyship, which arrived at the San 'Shyuum homeworld, Janjur Qom. The ship was later found by the Covenant and was installed within High Charity. Mendicant Bias' presence became known to the Covenant, who came to regard it as an Oracle. For a new triumvirate of Hierarchs to ascend, they would need the blessing of the Oracle, but as Mendicant entered dormancy, the blessing became a matter of political manipulation.

In 2525, Mendicant Bias' fragment on High Charity was "consulted" by the Ord Casto, the Minister of Fortitude, and Lod Mron, the Vice Minister of Tranquility; the pair wished to secure the large number of Forerunner artifacts on Harvest as part of their plan to usurp the reigning Hierarchs and to thus inaugurate a new Age of Reclamation. When the Philologist, Hod Rumnt, entered the data into the matrix, Mendicant came back online. In a shocking revelation, Mendicant Bias revealed that the "holy relics" on Harvest were actually humans and that the Covenant faith was based on an ages-old mistranslation. The glyph on the luminary was mistaken as "reclamation", when it truly meant "Reclaimer". This had the potential to completely undermine the Covenant's unity and faith. The two ministers inducted the Philologist into their plan and brought about their political revolution to prevent this, ultimately leading to the Human-Covenant War.

Mendicant Bias realized that its actions against the Forerunners had been mistaken and announced to its Covenant hosts its intention to bring the "reclaimers" to the Ark. To this end it attempted to leave High Charity by launching the dreadnought, an act that would have seriously damaged High Charity. Mendicant Bias was foiled only by chance; it was disconnected by some Lekgolo worms that were wriggling inside the ship. The AI was more formally disconnected afterward to prevent it from commandeering the ship again.

Human-Covenant War
"And so here at the end of my life, I do once again betray a former master. The path ahead is fraught with peril. But I will do all I can to keep it stable - keep you safe. I'm not so foolish to think this will absolve me of my sins. One life hardly balances billions. But I would have my masters know that I have changed. And you shall be my example."

- Mendicant Bias to John-117.

During the Battle of High Charity in November 2552, the UNSC AI Cortana fought Mendicant Bias to delay the launching of the dreadnought, allowing SPARTAN John-117 to board the vessel and return to Earth. On December 11, Mendicant Bias' fragment was carried through the Voi slipspace portal to Installation 00, where the missing shard was finally reunited with the part that had resided in the Ark's systems for around one-hundred millenia. When 343 Guilty Spark, the monitor of Installation 04, attempted to gain control of the Ark's Sentinels, Mendicant Bias addressed the former's lack of authority on the Ark and threatened to respond with lethal force if Guilty Spark persisted. Meanwhile, it attempted to communicate with John through terminals, claiming that it sought atonement by helping the Spartan. Mendicant Bias was presumably destroyed along with Installation 00, following John-117's destruction of Installation 04B.

Trivia

 * The word "Mendicant" comes from the Latin Mendicans and describes those, particularly from religious orders, who survive purely on charity and begging. "Bias" is a preference to a particular perspective or ideology. He was given this name by the Didact, who characterized him as a "beggar after knowledge".
 * Mendicant Bias may be the source of the whispering voice heard distinctly in the Mausoleum Suite on the Halo 2 Original Soundtrack. There are obvious similarities between the character expressed in the whispers and Mendicant Bias — both are imprisoned by memories of their past crimes, both are seeking forgiveness, and both retain a sense of fatalist philosophy. Its voice may also be heard as a similar whisper during the terminals' shift and when the script changes from the original terminal messages to the later messages after the originals become red. If the audio of the terminals' shifting is played backwards, a voice can be heard, possibly Mendicant Bias'.
 * A huge hologram in the Halo 3 multiplayer map Epitaph is widely believed to be that of Mendicant Bias.

List of appearances

 * Halo 3
 * Halo: Contact Harvest
 * Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe
 * Human Weakness
 * The Forerunner Saga
 * Halo: Cryptum
 * Halo: Primordium
 * Halo Legends
 * Origins