EliteCommander

Halo: Aegis Team

@Crab Bane I do think that your character having grudges against many of the former Covenant species does make for a nice source of potential drama. Although, I do think we have to take care to make sure that his superiors have no reason to believe he will engage in any potentially harmful behavior towards allies of those species. Otherwise, they would not have selected him for the mission, despite his skill. It's a fine line to walk, but his superiors just have to believe that he will behave.

The Apotheosis Arcanaeum

@Bliss AudaciousI think the usual approach is just to post it into the OOC for review before approval.

Halo: Aegis Team

A thunderstorm is threatening to knock me offline, but I have finished my CS for my primary character and put it in the character tab.

Halo: Aegis Team

Name: Vael ‘Virisusai

Rank (If applicable): Commander

Species: Sangheili

Appearance (for his armor, at least):

Appearance

Height: 7'10"

Skills:Vael bears the title of a blademaster, and with good reason. He also has general combat experience befitting his many years of experience, and has a long history of leadership.

Preferred Weapons/Equipment:

• Type-1 energy sword
• Type-25 plasma rifle
• Type-57 carbine
• Active Camouflage

Background: Vael ‘Virisusai is an old and experienced warrior, having already held the rank of major at the start of the Human-Covenant war. For him, the war had been an opportunity both to strive for the honor and glory of victory, and to serve the will of the gods. Early in his career, there was nothing that had set him apart from other ambitious Sangheili warriors. He did not have any particularly exceptional skills, nor an enlightened strategic mind. What he did have was the ability to survive, and to learn every lesson he could take in from every battle and skirmish.

Over the course of the war, every facet of Vael’s skill as a warrior was honed to a fine edge. From simple aim, to his ability to keep a calm mind in the chaos of battle, Vael became a more and more deadly presence on any battlefield. Victories, and especially defeats, shaped his judgment and leadership ability just as much as his personal combat skills. Like many of his kind, he preferred to kill in close quarters, especially with a blade. In both fighting against the Humans and countless hours of training and sparring among other Sangheili, he learned the intricacies of using a blade in a variety of contexts, and against different opponents. Given his people’s respect for swordsmanship, it was this accomplishment, perhaps more than the others, that most helped him to ascend the ranks of the Covenant. In the end, it was not accident, nor fate, nor genetics bestowing natural talent that created the warrior Vael became. It was pure, earned experience.

In the closing years of the Human-Covenant war Vael had ascended all the way up to the rank of Zealot, and in the final months, he had remained on High Charity after accepting an even more honored position. He was present when High Charity arrived at Installation 05…and present when the San’Shyuum wholly betrayed the Sangheili. Being stationed on the Covenant Holy City, he was a part of some of the thickest of fighting against Jiralhanae-led Covenant forces, then later the Flood as it infected the city. Ultimately, he did escape the parasite and went on to join the Fleet of Retribution to cleanse Earth of the Flood. From there, he took part in the Battle of the Ark, which finally put an end to Truth’s Covenant.

Following the end of the war, many Sangheili returned to their homes, to their clans. Many of those allied with one faction or another, but Vael did not do so immediately. His life had been one of honor and war, but most of all service to a faith he now knew to be a lie. Shortly after the Battle of the Ark, he secured a small ship and simply…left. He was not seen in Swords of Sanghelios space, nor that of the UNSC. With the exception of a single re-fueling run on Squala, it was as if he had vanished from civilized space.

Then, after a year’s absence, Vael suddenly returned to Sanghelios itself. He pledged his service and loyalty to the Swords of Sanghelios. Given his history, he rose quickly through the ranks. However, those who knew him before the war would have saw some changes in him. He was more reserved, both in terms of speech, and in a more cautious, calculated style of leadership. Perhaps the most notieable change is that, while he still kills his enemies without hesitation, he no longer shows the same eagerness to take glory in battle. He no longer demonstrates his pride in his kills, nor intentionally seeks the most challenging of foes. Despite all of this, his effectiveness has not diminished. He continues to be an honored warrior among the Sangheili, but for those who knew him before, one cannot help but to wonder what else has changed within him. Despite this, he has been chosen for the Aegis Team as a Sangheili warrior with enough skill and experience to be comparable to a Spartan.

Halo: Aegis Team

@Crab BaneYour CS, as it is now, you can move to the CS tab if you want. If you make any changes or additions, just remind me so I can look them over.

Halo: Aegis Team

I don't see any flaws with the CS, @Crab Bane. I would say it is good. A Gamma company Spartan is certainly an interesting one to play, considering the illegal mutagens they were given and the fact that they require regular doses of specific drugs to avoid psychosis. I look forward to seeing how that plays out.

I should mention something else about how I intended to do leadership for the team. With the team composition, UNSC personnel wouldn't normally have direct authority over Swords of Sanghelios personnel, and vice versa, but the team does need a single voice of leadership on combat missions. For the Swords of Sanghelios, I am going to have my Sangheili be the ranking officer, and for the UNSC, I was going to most likely pick a Spartan to be the fireteam leader. Depending on the context of the individual missions we are on operational authority would either be given to the Sangheili, or the Spartan. Both of the Spartans so far seem to be more of loners than leaders, so...I'll need to figure that out.

Halo: Aegis Team

@Crab Bane As I mentioned to Aristocles, I don't mind letting people get creative as long as it isn't directly contradictory to lore, or not too crazy. I am someone who likes to respect lore accuracy in general, but I also recognize that being very strict about it all the time can get both irritating and restrictive. In general, I'm probably not going to mind people adding things that don't contradict canon. Like a custom planet for a character's backstory, and things like that.

As for your character's equipment, I think the philosophy of the Spartan program now (if you're still going with a Spartan), is to give a lot of leeway to the Spartan's choices and preferences. Spartans on the Infinity (which is probably representative of Spartans elsewhere), are allowed to customize their armor with any compatible parts completely by their own desires, and they can deploy on missions with non-standard, even non-Human weapons. As long as a weapon modification is something that would be reasonable to be possible, I say go for it.

Halo: Aegis Team

@AristoclesThe idea of a sort of Spartan "secret military police" is an interesting one. While that isn't something mentioned in lore, it is something I could certainly see an organization like ONI authorizing. Spartans themselves are particularly loyal (except maybe the IVs. They are just the normal sort of loyal.), so it is not likely that he would have ever had to actually carry out those secret orders on a Spartan, but it's not farfetched that ONI might want to have operatives willing to do that, just in case.

One note is that the Spartan-III "companies" aren't really organizations that one could be assigned to. They basically just represent the generations of Spartan-IIIs. Alpha was trained first, Beta second, Gamma third. It doesn't really change anything, though, since your character could still have been assigned to a variety of Spartan teams with that same mission. It's mostly just semantics.

I don't mind people getting creative as long as they don't directly contradict lore, or do anything too crazy, so it seems to be fine. It will be interesting to see if people get nervous having a Spartan looking over our shoulders.

Potential RPs in the Halo Universe

I have finished creating the OOC thread. Here is the link: https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/182869-halo-aegis-team/ooc

I went with your suggestion for the name, @Crab Bane. Everyone make sure to put your character sheets in the OOC so I can look them over before accepting them. You don't need to make your CSs anything elaborate. Just a basic idea of who they are is fine. For anyone who might be coming across this thread who has not commented, I am still accepting new members, so anyone can feel free to post a CS.

Halo: Aegis Team

In some ways, peace can be a more difficult prospect than war. The end of the Human-Covenant war saw the complete destruction of the Covenant and its leadership, the decimation of both Human and Covenant fleets, and, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, the removal of the Flood as a threat to the galaxy. In the aftermath of the devastation, after the end of a decades-long war that had claimed a long list of colonies and billions of Human lives, the notion of peace was understandably appealing to Humanity. For many of the Sangheili, who had not only faced heavy losses in the Great Schism, but had faced the end of both the faith and way of life that had guided their people for countless generations, peace was the only way to rebuild their society. The informal alliance that had first been forged on Installation 05 was formalized into treaty in February of 2553.

However, the known galaxy was far from unified after the end of the war. While the Swords of Sanghelios held firm control over their homeworld and many of its colonies, other splinter factions still arose in the power vacuum the Covenant had left behind. Groups like the Servants of Abiding Truth, and later Jul ‘Mdama’s Covenant, could not abandon their faith in the Forerunners and maintained efforts to destroy all they deemed blasphemers. At the same time, without the threat of extinction looming over their heads, the flames of rebellion were rekindled among cells of Human insurrectionist groups. Along with less focused threats, like pirates and Jiralhanae warlords clinging on to what remained of their power, there was never truly an end to the fighting in the Orion arm.

The year is 2557, five years since the end of the Human-Covenant war. While there are enemies to fight across many parts of the known galaxy, the regions of space designated as Joint Occupation Zones present unique challenges. Formalized as regions of cooperative Human-Sangheili settlement, the peacekeeping efforts in these areas cannot simply be handled unilaterally by one species or the other. After five years with no reason to believe their enemies would be defeated quickly or easily, new teams have been formed to escalate their joint peacekeeping efforts.

One among these joint operations teams is Hotel Sierra Special Operations Team Aegis, or Aegis Team: a special operations force of hand-picked UNSC and Swords of Sanghelios specialists intended to take on critical missions primarily within Joint Occupation Zones. Falling outside usual structures for military command on both sides, the ideal candidates for Aegis Team would be adaptable, resourceful, amenable to working cooperatively with their former enemies, and most importantly, highly skilled as to be able to deal with powerful threats swiftly and decisively. However, considering the number of conflicts across the known galaxy and the priority for skill over agreeable personality traits, not all of the team’s final candidates may be “ideal.”

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Our characters will be hand-picked specialists for Aegis Team, and may be Human, Spartan, Sangheili (Elites), Unggoy (Grunts), or Kig-Yar (Jackals), and you may have multiple characters. I would be willing to accept one Mgalekgolo colony (a Hunter), though I will say that is a rather unique sort of personality to portray that could be a challenge. Based on the lore and how our story is beginning, I cannot accept a Jiralhanae (Brute) as a part of the team at the start, but if someone has interest in a Jiralhanae character, I can conceive of situations where it would be reasonable to add one to the team. Just message me and we may be able to figure something out. We shall be beginning on Earth at HIGHCOM Facility Bravo-6, our characters having been gathered from across the Orion arm over the course of several weeks, before being sent out on our first mission.

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Basic character sheet (Add any other information you feel that you need. I’m not too strict.) Applications are currently open for anyone who wants to join.

Name:

Rank (If applicable):

Species:

Appearance:

Skills:

Preferred Weapons/Equipment:

Background:

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Optionally, I have created a Discord server for the RP:

Discord Link