The Group on Elites were walking along the hillside, headed due east.There were about five of them, maybe 6. It was hard to tell from 1300 meters.

Koontzy sends in a short, action-packed story entitled “Silent Assasians”.

“Hang on, sir, I’m moving a little closer,” said another voice. Louis heard the rustle of leaves and sticks cracking on the radio. Thirty seconds later, the voice returned. “Affirmative. Repeat, affirmative contact. I think it is the clearing, sir.”

The crew of the Alcatraz investigates mysterious goings-on as Omniscient sends in another chapter of ‘Sea of Steel’.

“What’s happening?” yelled the leader. He looked behind him, to see the limp body of his sensor officer lying lifeless against the back wall.

The action heats up in Part Four of Omniscient‘s ‘Sea of Steel’ saga. You’ll find it (and the rest of the story) in our Fan Fiction section.

The loud speaker sounded, “All crew to your respective briefing rooms. Repeat, all crew to your respective briefing rooms.”

Omniscient sends in Part Three of his ‘Sea of Steel’ story – and the action heats up. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section.

    // About twenty years before you were born, the powers that were decided to send probes into space in the hopes that they would be picked up by an intelligent alien race. These probes had the pictures of naked members of your species scrawled in gold on the side. They hoped that the other race would then travel to Earth and share the wonders of interstellar travel with humanity. //
    “Did anybody find the probes?”
    // Did your mom bake bread? //

A Douglas Adams-inspired AI, porn, and Monty Python flashbacks – the Hermes Trismegistus saga (now on Chapter 7) continues to surprise. Check it out in our Fan Fiction section.

It will be my greatest offering, my finest work. When I return to Kholai and his shallow subordinates bearing the head of this machine being, the name Galkosh will no longer be spoken with contempt.

Chris Cox submits his latest piece of Fan Fiction, ‘The Wanderers‘, replete with title art from Jason O’Brien. (Future chapters should have more artwork.) The Fan Fiction section continues its rampant growth.

More fire started coming from several directions and all we saw was the setting sun and a few clouds as the pilot traded speed for distance in what was becoming a desperate attempt to break contact.

Newcomer John Oreskovich sends in a story apparently titled Halo, Random Musings. The Fan Fiction area continues to grow.

The communication system constantly monitors the game, looking for any of the dozens of hooks it can use to call combat dialog. Just to give you an idea of the complexity of the system, it knows who damaged who, what their respective races were, what weapon was used, how bad the damage was, and what the other characters in the encounter were doing when the damage was dealt, and it can call different lines of combat dialog based on all of these parameters. This means we can have someone say “Eat lead” and be sure he’s not firing a flame-thrower. Sometimes they even laugh at each other’s jokes or comment on something somebody else said in the heat of battle. This gives our characters real personality and believability.

There’s also a little snippet that answers a longstanding question:

The entire first level revolves around the defense and eventual abandonment of the Pillar of Autumn…

It’s been speculated that we’d see the PoA only in a cutscene at the start of the game; when the Halo Updates started mentioning some modeling of the ship itself, folks wondered if that meant it would be a battleground instead of a movie – this seems to confirm that it will be. Go read the whole thing – it made me tingle.