It is with a heavy heart that we here at BORG announce that Brian Morden, aka Ar-Isildur, died at 5:55AM. He was 19 years old. His younger brother, Jamin, posted a note on our forum telling us the sad news. Please reply with good thoughts.

I and a few others have actually met Brian in person, and I feel privileged to have been in the company of someone that was both a lover and a fighter. Brian shocked his doctors by fighting the cancer that was eating through his body to the bitter end. Yet through out it all, his love for his friends and family never faltered, and we never failed to give it right back to him.

You didn’t have to meet him in person to see what a great guy he is. Just do a search through the forum’s archive for his posts. You will see that we have lost a warm and decent human being.

For the man that popularized “<3", it is only fitting that he stayed with his family and friends through Valentine's Day. Brian was no fool.

There will be more from us here at BORG. Count on it.

– Miguel

As below, the American International Toy Fair started today, and pictures of the Halo figures on display are already hitting the web. There’s a nice collection at Figures.com, including several Halo figures on this and the next few pages (use the “2”, “3”, and “4” links at the bottom). Thanks to Spartan ][ for noticing this.

According to Team Xbox, the upcoming Halo action figures will be shown at the 100th annual American International Toy Fair in New York, starting… tomorrow. (Anyone who actually makes it to the fair… TAKE PICTURES!) The fair runs through Wednesday, February 19. Thanks to Strato for the heads-up.

Upon request from the publisher, we’ve removed all Electronic Gaming Monthly articles from our Press Scans section. We apologize to EGM for violating their copyright (we were under the impression that we had at least a tacit okay for this, based on communications with EGM personnel), and we apologize to anyone inconvenienced by the removal of this information.

Bungie’s superstar intern Skip Weasel gets into the holiday spirit with a guide to love on Bungie.net. Neither Bungie Studios nor Bungie.org are responsible for the consequences if you choose to take his advice.

A few days ago, Åstro dropped into our forum to suggest that he was trying to speed-run Halo again. He was shooting for a 90 minute full runthrough, on Legendary. Yesterday, we got mail from Rory Hartley and Bill Copeland, a pair in Calgary, Canada that have done a full run-through on Easy:

Pillar of Autumn	5:45		343 Guilty Spark	8:48
Halo	15:28		The Library	15:34
Truth & Reconciliation	14:45		Two Betrayals	13:48
Silent Cartographer	10:02		Keyes	10:00
Assault on the Control Room	11:40		The Maw	9:52

Total time there: 110 minutes, 52 seconds. (I’d guess this means Åstro’s estimate might be a little optimistic…) Rory and Bill weren’t counting beginning and ending cutscenes, and they skipped all skippable cutscenes. (It’s unclear what rules Åstro and company are playing by.) Could this be the start of some friendly competition?

In what is clearly one of the most bizarre interviews Bungie.net has yet published, Matt Soell interviews the Disembodied Soul. The beauty of this one is, you can reproduce it yourself! (Ask Matt’s questions, you’ll get the same answers.) For long-time Bungie fans, learning about some of the Soul’s girlfriends might be the highlight of this one… The Soul, unfortunately, is clearly behind the times:

Question:	What do you know about Halo?
The soul says:	I’m a soul, not a psychiatrist. Ask me a question about one of Bungie’s games. That’s what I was enslaved to answer.

Go figure…

In an attempt to show up Lorraine R. McLees, Stosh has put up a Valentines-themed comic of his own. (Give it up, Stosh.) Don’t forget the site itself… I think he’s just bitter cause he got beat by a girl. (Two, if you count Lorraine.) Update: DOH! Wrong comic. (No wonder I had troubles with it…) Try this one. (I still give the round to Lorraine, though. This one’s pretty funny… but the Halo Babies can’t be beat.)

Another Brian Morden update from SilverBrin – the news isn’t great, but the power of positive thinking is astounding. We have nothing but love for you, Isi…

Last fall, a dozen or so website maintainers in the Xbox community were invited to Microsoft’s headquarters for XBL Bootcamp, a two-day infofest on Xbox Live (then a month or so from release). Yesterday, the marketing team that organized that event, AEG, sent out some pretty nice Valentine’s Day boxes… you can see a couple of pics in this forum post. Mmm… the chocolate is GOOD!

Whoknew writes to let us know he’s added a mirror for Valet Parking, a movie we mentioned about a month ago. In these days of tight bandwidth (mythica is still down), it’s good to know there are volunteers out there!

Whoa – he’s right. opie301 noticed that the Halo Story page was updated at the beginning of this week – I missed it entirely. It’s not a big one, but it’s another piece of the puzzle…

A serious collection of artwork for you, finally – 10 images, ranging from pen sketches of battle scenes to a visual apology for a fan fiction joke. The highlight, for me, I think, is the Silent Cartographer render. Check ’em all out in the Miscellaneous Art section.

Finally clearing out some of the backlogged artwork – first up, two desktops in our Wallpaper section.

Proving once again that ingenuity and perseverance will eventually solve most problems, Frogblast performs a Halo trick shown to be possible only yesterday – and this time, there are no hacks involved. This trick contains spoilers, for the 6 of you who are still avoiding them. For the rest of you, watch this and giggle maniacally.

There’s an interesting article over at Publisher’s Weekly about the emerging market for video game tie-in books. They’re more than a gimmick (as the article makes clear), and they’re a reasonable source of income, as well:

Sales for Halo and Resident Evil sell about a third of what the biggest science fiction titles, like those by Terry Goodkind or Robert Jordan, do, while second-tier titles, such as Orson Scott Card’s novels or the Dune series, sell only twice as much.

I wouldn’t have considered Card as ‘second-tier’… but maybe he is, from a sales standpoint. In any case, swing by and read the piece! Thanks to Eric Trautmann for the heads-up.

mnemesis and cybrfrk both sent in links to articles about the Xbox Greatest Hits program (one at Yahoo, one at CNN) – the gist is that MS is slashing prices on some Xbox games. The reason it’s Halo news, however, is because Halo is NOT being included in the ‘Platinum Hits’ program – according to Ed Bland, a sales director at MS, it’s still doing very well at $49, so they’re keeping it there. Way to go, Halo!

…Wow. I mean… wow. Update: upon consideration, I feel I should point out that at least two of these movies have pretty serious spoilers for REAL tricksters – they show things that might ruin one of the last remaining ‘big’ tricks left to do. Don’t watch them if you’re intent on doing this trick on an unhacked box. (Frogblast makes it clear which movies these are – this note is simply an attempt to help you resist the temptation.)

The last Fan Fiction update for a couple of weeks:

• The Awakening, Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, by Bloodcider
• Survival Grounds Part 3, by mattˆ
• And Raise Your Head With Pride! Part 2 , by Arthur Wellesly
• HALO: The Marine Chronicles, by Gunnery Sergeant
• HALO: Missing In Action – Chapter 9 and HALO: The Assembly, by Hikaru-119
• Halo: Reunion from Destruction Part 1, by Frensa Geran
• The Battle For Sigma Octanus 3, by moniter101
• Fallen Angel: Part 7, by Gruntkiller/Covert
• Green Plants and Dinner, by Dispraiser
• Changes, by Mark Boone
• Under the sergeant’s cap (revised) Chapters 1-7, by Traumatised Marine

There is almost 500k worth of text here to read – and the last update was 72 hours ago. Two of these stories (The Marine Chronicles and Under the sergeant’s cap) are over 150k EACH – beware if you’re on a slow connection. When the Fan Fiction section reopens, there’ll be some new ideas for you all. (Thanks to all who’ve written – there have been some great suggestions, and you’ve given me lots to think about.)

Holy Magillicutty! Valentines goodies at B.net. Woohoo! (This one rocks.)