Falchion: Difference between revisions

{{Era|Forerunner}}

|rank=[[Warrior-Servant]]

|rank-title=[[Rate]]

The Falchion was one of the commanders who led the defense of the [[Orion complex]] during the [[Forerunner-Flood war]]. In the endgame of the conflict, after most of the remaining Forerunners had been evacuated to safety at the [[greater Ark]], he commanded an element of the Forerunner forces in one of the last major engagements against the [[Flood]]. With four [[thema]]s at risk of being completely overrun, the Falchion was placed in command of the first [[clench]] of the Forerunner defensive line; the clench encompassed forces within nineteen systems formerly linked by [[star road]]s. His forces included twelve [[Fortress-class vessel]]s, their mobility limited due to space-time debt, acting as apex control stations for 700,000 [[Harrier-class vessel]]s. Meanwhile, the Flood's forces consisted of over 100,000 captured vessels, with the most powerful ones being 400 [[Forerunner dreadnought|dreadnoughts]]. The Flood first breached the Falchion's clench at the 78th Thema, a pre-stellar nebula home to numerous stony and icy planets and [[asteroid]]s. The first Flood ships were caught off-guard by the Falchion's forces; using [[Precursor]] [[neural physics]] transmission for transit, they materialized slowly, making them temporarily vulnerable to the Forerunners' immediate response.<ref name="p212"/>

The Falchion ordered the harriers to launch a series of precision strikes using local asteroids launched via gravity slings straight into the emergence fields of the Flood vessels; by refraining from using [[directed energy weapon]]s or projectiles, the Forerunner ships could remain concealed for longer. The attacks destroyed half of the arriving vessels, while the other half scattered across a few thousand kilometers in order to evade the barrage of asteroids. The Falchion then dispatched a multi-pronged force of harriers to deal with the remaining ships. Engaging the Flood-controlled ships openly with their beam weapons, the harriers quickly destroyed a third of the enemy fleet.<ref name="p212"/>

By this point, the Flood's forces had been neutralized, with some of the remaining ships intact but in no condition to fight back. These were examined by the Falchion's [[ancilla]]s, which then sent their designators to [[sentinel]]s deployed from an apex fortress. The sentinels were sent to board the Flood vessels and swiftly reprogram all Flood-corrupted control ancillas; however, although they had supposedly been proofed against the [[Gravemind]]'s [[logic plague]], the machines were quickly subverted by the Flood. This left the Falchion with no other choice than to destroy the infected ships one by one.<ref name="p212"/>

|fr={{Explain|''Le Cimeterre''|The Scimitar}} in ''Halo: Silentium'', after a Middle Eastern sword.

[[Category:Forerunners]]