Sword theory, religious discussion, and Guilty Spark’s motivations… a healthy update, indeed, to the vast collection of speculation and debate that is the Halo Story Page. Check it out!

At midnight, PST, this morning, Halo Babies relaunched their website. A new design by Ghôlsbane (who co-maintains our own myth.bungie.org), new artwork, and more – read the entire news post by mrsmiley for details. No new comic (yet) – but the day’s not over yet. 🙂 Take a look!

Since so many people are still confused: HaloBabies is offline. If you go to the site, it will ask for a password. “Offline” here does not mean literally unpowered, it means the site is not fully operational and does not have comics on it. The operators are overhauling the content and it should return pretty soon. There is nothing we at HBO can do about this. So, please stop emailing us… Update:Hehe – see above. Count Zero was completely right to post this – we’ve been getting a ridiculous amount of mail demanding to know why the Halo Babies website was password-protected until today – and why we hadn’t posted more news about this. The timing on his post, compared to the relaunch of the site, is amusing.

Will, aka [-PtO-]_EteRnaL from PtO (a halo clan that plays on XBC), sent along a link to his collection of movies; you can find everything from gameplay to glitches. Check ’em out… and hit the contact link at the bottom of the main page if you’ve got any questions about joining the clan, or comments about the films.

SexyJosh, from Team Sexy Films, has been writing some Halo-themed music recently; there are currently two songs available on his website. Lament to Keyes is a 4-minute ballad, and Cortana is half as long, twice as fast, and a bit ruder. If you like the music, explore the site; there’s quite a bit more, non-Halo-related, stuff. Check ’em out!

w00t – Xhzjang, the guy who brought you the Halo No Hud mod a few days ago, now brings you the Halo Font Editor. Change the ingame halo text – mess with its color, font style, even its location. Fantastic for folks who are tired of having action obscured by chat… or folks trying to make movies without chat at all. Grab this today; it’s only 35K! Thanks to Reppyboyo for the heads-up.

Devin Olsen points out that Series 3 of the Halo Action Figures (Banshee, Blue Master Chief, Marines, and Johnson) have moved from ‘Pre-order’ to ‘Order’ status at DieCast Express. Buy ’em while they’re hot!

Looks like Cortana.org has come back online. It’s positioned to be a file repository for Halo mods… once the Halo Editing Kit gets released. For now, it’s just a design – go check it out! Update: Hehe – looks like I got corrected. 🙂 There’s a new news post up at the site explaining what it’s REALLY about.

Bah. Two days ago, SplitBoxer, from the XboxConnect team, wrote to point out that V4.0 RC1 was released, and available for download. I managed to forget to post it, though, until I noticed a note over at Rampancy.net. I’m pretty sure I should stop cooking tomato sauce in aluminum pans… Anyway, go grab it. (The current version available from the XBC site is one rev past the version available in R.net’s link, right now. Who knows, by the time you read it, it might be more advanced yet.)

Dr@Home wrote to point out a small vid (2.7 mb) he’s put up of his motorized Lego Warthog. WMP9 format – nice looking vehicle!

Whoa. You think YOU’RE an obsessed Halo fan? You got nuthin’ on this guy. Danny Kolacz is a diehard Halo collector, but he’s always been unhappy that the Active Camo Master Chief (a figure Joyride didn’t sell; they gave it away as a promotion) came in a plain cardboard box, rather than the standard packaging for Joyride toys. It took him about an hour to rectify the situation (125K) without destroying the original packaging… now that Active Camo cheif can sit on his shelf with the rest of the boxed toys, and not look out of place.

Today’s Guest One One Se7en looks at UNSC weaponry in a new light.

Blackstar comes up with a cool new game in today’s Calvin and Halo.

Seventeen peices for you today in the Fan Fiction section…

• Halo: Liberation of Earth – Section 2, by HawkEye
• Souls of War.: Part 2: Into The Fire, by Dark-NiTe
• Mysteries Part 2, by Horror
• Souls of War.: Part 3: Storming the Fortress, by Dark-NiTe
• Draco III: Wrath of the Covenant, by Kinotrica ‘Mocka’
• Hidden Threat: Chapter 2 – Exit Dropship, by NBD24
• Earths End?, by Jim
• The Siege of Zion Base; Part Two: Siege – Chapters 6 & 7, by Scimitarex
• The Siege of Zion Base; Part Two: Siege – Chapter 8, by Scimitarex
• Chapter Three of Halo:Armageddon, by Chris Luchterhand
• SPARTAN III Ch 1: This is War, by Winters
• The Moral Redemption of Dr. Halsey, by Ross Becalick
• The Enemy Within-Chapter Two: A Trap Triggered, by Mind_Affecting_Parasite
• Croton 9: Into the belly of the beast&#4294967173and it&#4294967186s not feeling too well., by Trevor White
• Last Resort – Part 1, by Nem0fTime
• Hit Hard Ch. 4: –Reclaimer–, by Nick Kang
• Halo: The Aftermath pt. 4/5, by Matthew Buzas

Some people seem to be having trouble with the submission script – they get to the second screen, and their computer tells them it can’t find the site. I can’t explain why this mght be happening – we didn’t make any changes at all to the script except to move it to a new server, but if you couldn’t find the new server, you wouldn’t be able to get to the FIRST screen, much less the second. If we figure out the mystery, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Sniperman27 has released Halo Messenger 3 (2.3 mb), a standalone windows app that checks rss files from HBO and Red vs Blue, as well as giving you access to the Psyjnir Complex Music Database. It’s pretty slow checking rss feeds… but apparently, that’s our fault.

Whoa. Crispy Spartan dropped by our forum to dish out the first weekly update on his First Strike mod project. (We first mentioned this mod a month and a half ago, before it moved to Halocity.org.) Some good stuff in the updates; sketches, early models, and maps. Check it out!

Silvergrunt created a movie using ‘Fraps, Windows Movie Maker, and 2 cans of Mountain Dew’ – it’s almost 5 minutes of an Oddball game on Derelict, filmed on the HBO-Coerce server. It’s in WMP9 format, weighs in at about 12 mb, and is being hosted by MereCatfish. The soundtrack is Mothergoat’s ‘Hail 117 Anthem’. You can grab it here.

BOLL has continued to tweak his Grunt shooting game (wait for it… then shoot the grunt when he appears); at this point, he’s done. (The file is now local, so he HAS to be done.) More grunt colors, more stats, piercing bullets, better graphics, less lag… See how you do.

Looks like I totally misread the iGames Championship Match Results from yesterday; was that explaining paragraph on the top of the page then? The numbers correspond to the player’s POSITION, not score; low numbers are better . The US/Canada’s representative, Noah Evans, was actually doing quite well – but was beaten in the finals. (Looks like he tied for 4th place overall.) The winner was Jonathan Finglass, of the UK, with nobody NEAR him (Stefan Dammers, of Holland, took a distant second). Thanks to Spideroptics for pointing out the win on our forum!

Fluffy, from Battleground: Halo, points out that they have a new mailbag up. It’s a joint effort – towards something.