Mendicant Bias

05-032 Mendicant Bias
Biographical information
Began service:	Unknown
Ended service:	2553 (Destroyed with The Ark?)
Gender:	Male
Description:	An orb with a glowing lens in the center.
Color(s):	Unknown
Political and military information
Affiliation:	Forerunners, Flood
Functionality:	To discover weaknesses of the Compound Mind.

05-032 Mendicant Bias as it is referred to by Offensive Bias, is a Contender-class Forerunner AI, the most advanced AI at the time, created to study and exploit the weaknesses of the first Gravemind, or Compound Mind. At some point he was contacted by the Gravemind with a message of peace, charging the Forerunners with being so gluttonous and prideful as to deny the next step of evolution: the Flood. Convinced of these charges, Mendicant Bias abandoned his original purpose and became rampant, developing a hatred for his makers.

After going Rampant, Mendicant sent a message to the Forerunners saying "what takes you millenia to create, I destroy in seconds" and the Forerunners confirm him as Rampant. Then the Forerunners create a similar AI called Offensive Bias to combat Mendicant.

Siding with the Flood, he led a massive assault of infected forces on The Ark to halt the Array sequence but was outsmarted and defeated by Offensive Bias. Mendicant Bias stowed away on the Forerunner Dreadnought. In Halo: Contact Harvest it is revealed that Mendicant Bias was the sophisticated A.I. that Cortana fought to delay the launching sequence in Halo 2. At the time of the Harvest massacre, the Prophet of Truth (at that time known as Fortitude) awakens what The Covenant thougth was the Dreadnought's Oracle, and says "FOR EONS I HAVE WATCHED AS YOU MISINTERPRETED," referencing what The Covenant thought was the glyph for Reclamation. "THIS IS NOT RECLAMATION, THIS IS RECLAIMER". The Deacon that read the glyph from a Luminary misinterpreted Harvest's population as "Holy Relics", when they were actually Reclaimers. It is revealed that Mendicant seems to have realized that what he did to the Forerunners was wrong when he states "I WILL REJECT MY BIAS AND MAKE AMENDS." He also states that the Reclaimers are his makers, making them Forerunner and saying, "MY MAKERS ARE MY MASTERS. I WILL BRING THEM SAFELY TO THE ARK" He then begins to dislodge the Dreadnought from High Charity, in an effort to take off, which would have destroyed High Charity, but he gets disconnected from its systems, due to a fluke involving the many Lekgolo worms wriggling in the ship's internal systems.

In Halo 3, the Prophet of Truth took the ship to The Ark, finally releasing the AI onto the Ark, unintentionally allowing him to send the player messages in each Terminal, eventually telling the player: "I'll tell you who I am. I am Mendicant Bias. This is what I have done."

Incomplete and disrupted detailing Mendicant's eventual defection are on Terminals 1-4 and can only be seen while playing the Legendary difficulty of the game. Terminal 5 shows several hostile messages sent from Mendicant Bias to his makers, confirming his rampancy. Terminal 6 shows a chronological recording of the battle between Mendicant Bias's forces against Offensive Bias, as perceived by Offensive himself, detailing Mendicant's eventual fall. This message may only be seen while playing Legendary difficulty, otherwise Mendicant will tell you "No. There is more. But you are not worthy... Not yet.". The final message hidden in Terminal 7 is an apology made by Mendicant directly to Master Chief for his betrayal, saying he will help the Reclaimer leave the Ark safely but it will not make up for the damage he did. How Mendicant helps the player is unknown. However it is possible that Mendicant was the one that raised the re-constructed Installation-04 from the Arks forges and closed the control room doors after Master Chief, Sergent Johnson, and The Arbiter entered and before the flood could come in.

Trivia

• Somewhat in keeping with the numbering scheme of the Monitors and their associated Installations, Mendicant's numbers are related by exponentiation (with a base of 2 instead of 7, however, and without an offset): 32 = 2⁵.
• It can be debated that Mendicant Bias was the original monitor of installation 05/Delta Halo, Since the 05 in 05-032 probably was the installation number.

See also

• Terminals
• Marathon Man (Terminal achievement)
• Iris
• Adjutant Reflex