Lifeworker beacon

A Lifeworker beacon was an device utilized by the Lifeshaper known as the Librarian to imprint her geas upon humanity.

Design and operation
The Lifeworker beacon seen on Installation 07 took the form of a great, egg-shaped structure on a platform of Forerunner metal that was fifty meters wide and about shoulder height to a human. The beacon was as high as the platform was wide and was the color of beaten copper laced through with swirls of dusky sunset sky. It was incised all around by smooth vertical grooves about an arm span apart. The device was camouflaged from the humans in the city it was placed in and they built a market square around it. -

The purpose of the Lifeworker beacons was to act as an automated imprinting system, imposing the Librarian's various geas upon all of the humans within its range at birth. To the humans, they always recalled this as the Librarian coming to them at birth when in reality it was the beacons. However, the signal from the beacons could be changed by whoever was in control of them. This would alter the geas a person was following to this new set of instructions.

During his odyssey on Installation 07, Chakas found one of these beacons in the ruins of a Tudejsa city and correctly guessed its purposes. By this time, the beacons on the installation had been subverted by Mendicant Bias and the Primordial who utilized them to alter the geas of the Tudejsa and draw them unresisting to the various "Palaces of Pain" located around the ring. After meeting Genemender-Folder-of-Fortune, Chakas learned of this and agreed that conflicting instructions from the various beacons around the installation made sense in the situation they were in.

Trivia

 * Though not explicitly stated, the Librarian most likely used her beacons to manipulate the geas of Chakas and Riser to prepare them for the coming of Bornstellar-Makes-Eternal-Lasting. The two had very specific dreams from their geas regarding Bornstellar coming in search of treasure while Bornstellar had been tested and chosen by his ancilla for the Librarian over the course of only a few years time after arriving on Edom. As seen in Halo: Primordium, the beacons' signals can be used to update the geas in a living person as circumstances change.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Primordium