Terminal (Halo 3)

''This article is about the Terminals in Halo 3. For other uses of "Terminal", see Terminal (disambiguation)'' The terminals in Halo 3 are Forerunner terminals that provide insight into the history of the Forerunners, primarily the Forerunner-Flood war. The terminals are a continuation of the Iris alternate reality game used as viral marketing for Halo 3. They clarify a great deal of the Iris story line by naming the authors of different messages and by explaining the circumstances of the original firing of the Halo Array. The terminals follow the stories of the Librarian and the Didact, Forerunner logs of Flood attacks, and 05-032 Mendicant Bias' progression into rampancy.

Overview
The terminals can be accessed on any difficulty. Finding and accessing all seven of the terminals in Halo 3 unlocks the Marathon Man achievement; this can be done over the course of several sessions, out of order, and on various difficulties. The player does not need to finish any of the missions in question in order to unlock the achievement.

The terminals
The terminals are located on three levels: The Ark, The Covenant, and Halo. There is also a hidden terminal on Cortana, but that one does not need to be found in order to get the achievement.

Upon initial access on all difficulty levels, the seven terminals give background details regarding the story of the 300-year-long Forerunner-Flood conflict, including strategies, encounters, enemy and friendly losses, and procedures leading up to the activation of the Halo Array. After a short time, this text is overwritten and a new message is displayed on the screen.

On Easy, Normal, and Heroic difficulty levels, this second screen of text details a correspondence between two Forerunner lovers called the "Librarian" and "Didact". In this transcript, as in the Terminals, "L" stands for Librarian and "D" stand for Didact.

An unknown entity sends brief messages onscreen upon shutdown. The final terminal reveals that this entity is the rampant Forerunner AI Mendicant Bias, who had previously assisted in the Flood's attempt to destroy the Forerunners.

On the Legendary difficulty level, the second screen of text tells the story of Mendicant Bias. It is revealed that Mendicant Bias was the AI who took control of AdjutantReflex during the "Iris" campaign. Messages detailing Mendicant's eventual defection to the Gravemind are displayed by Terminals 1 through 4, with the AI having an ongoing conversation with the Flood (tagged LF.Xx.3273). These messages are incomplete and partially disrupted, with {~} symbolizing the disruptions. A noticeable pattern in the messages suggests that many of the disruptions occur at the use of pronouns, such as "I, we, me, they, it", though this pattern is not entirely consistent.

Terminal 5 displays several hostile messages sent from Mendicant Bias to its makers, confirming its rampancy. These messages are different on each difficulty level.

Terminal 6 details the defeat of Mendicant Bias by Offensive Bias, as perceived by Offensive itself.

The final message hidden in Terminal 7 is an apology made by Mendicant directly to John-117 for the former's betrayal, atoning by saying it will help the Reclaimer leave the Ark safely.

Terminal One

Terminal Two

Terminal Three

Terminal Four

Terminal Five

Terminal Six

Terminal Seven

Cortana terminal
"It was the coin's fault! I wanted to make you strong, keep you safe... I'm sorry, I can't..."

- Cortana terminal

The Cortana terminal is an Easter egg located in the basement room of the Tilt Skull's location, where the gravity hammer is found. This Terminal does not count towards the Marathon Man achievement but instead plays a secret Cortana moment. This terminal references dialog from Halo: The Fall of Reach.

Translation and naming
It is important to note that phrases such as "Maginot Line", "Eden", and "fairy tale" would not have existed in the Forerunner language(s). Forerunner technology (including terminals) utilizes extremely advanced translation software. This software is capable of incorporating idioms from a reader's own experience, such that a human viewing the terminals will see human idiomatic expressions and human names in relevant contexts.

Several pieces of text are bracketed and shown in a darker font color; this is likely done to indicate that the phrases in question have no exact equivalent in the reader's language, and that an approximation has been used. Furthermore, some bracketed phrases also contain sub-bracketed question marks (such as the phrase "[travel the path of demons[?]]"), implying that the terminals' software is unsure of the proper translation for the given dialog.

Interestingly, the word "Ark" does not appear in brackets, meaning that it is a direct translation, rather than a human idiom.

Reversed messages
h0RRCjpmoAA In certain parts, backwards speech can be heard. Common phrases include "Archive Access", "Interruption", "Lineage Confirmed", "Data Corruption", and "Welcome Child".

Additional information
For a moment after a page is initially accessed the text is shown in its original state in Forerunner script. The symbols stand in only for letters, not for numbers or punctuation, and share the same colors (i.e. gold and orange) as the letters possess when 'translated'. They stand in only for the letters in the main sections, not in the text that comes up immediately before the display is redirected.

The symbols bear no resemblance to the other, more well known Forerunner symbols and possess no observable meaning, as they replace the English characters at random (this can be seen by flipping quickly between two pages and concentrating on any one particular symbol, observing how the stand-in changes).

ONI research
John-117 was not the only human to have read the terminals. After the Human-Covenant War, an ONI science team referenced the terminals as being a source for their prior information on the Forerunners. It is unknown whether the terminals known to the ONI team were the same terminals John-117 viewed on Installation 00 or if ONI accessed similar data files at another installation.

Incongruities
Parts of the terminals are seemingly contradicted by newer information from The Forerunner Saga. These novels are first-hand accounts of the timeframe covered by the terminals and hold higher canon priority than the source material. The terminals themselves, being in-universe documents, are not infallible. Considering that they had been maintained by the unstable Mendicant Bias for 100,000 years, it is possible that they have been corrupted over the span of millennia, especially where the AI itself is concerned; more likely though, they were altered due to the Domain's tendency to inexplicably change data. Thus, one may attribute some of the inconsistencies between the sources to unreliable presentation, not because the terminals' content has been retconned outright.

The Didact's involvement
One of the most notable incongruities occurs in Terminal 3, in which the Librarian asks the Didact if he has learned nothing from 300 years of warfare against with the Flood. According to Halo: Cryptum, the Didact went into exile around 101,000 BCE and was not recovered until around 100,000 BCE. Barring a retcon, the simplest explanation is that the Librarian was referring to the Warrior-Servants' ability to share sensory information, or that he could have researched the preceding centuries of war via the Domain.

Mendicant Bias' betrayal
Another inconsistency involves the timeframe of Mendicant Bias' betrayal. In Terminal 3, the Didact refers to Mendicant as an ally; the context of the message implies that the AI was created during the Forerunner-Flood war. However, Halo: Cryptum shows that Mendicant Bias had been created prior to the Didact's exile and had already gone rogue forty-three years before the latter's revival. The novel depicts Mendicant Bias' assault on the capital, which occurred only weeks after the Didact's resuscitation and before he regained command of the Forerunner military. Halo: Primordium shows that the "Mendicant Bias" that attacked the capital was only a fragment of the AI's personality construct array and that the Forerunners attempted to alleviate the shard's rampancy. It is possible that the fragment was "cured" and later reverted to rampancy, thus providing the 'betrayal' narrative for the later terminals. However, this would still leave several chronological gaps, primarily concerning the Didact's knowledge of Mendicant Bias.

Trivia

 * The Mantle symbol in the terminals is also seen on the cover of Halo: Ghosts of Onyx and in several other media.
 * When certain terminals are redirecting the player after they have logged in, as the screen turns red on the left side are symbols and the words "I AM MENDICANT BIAS."