Like, yes, the whole "kidnapping 75 six-year-olds to turn them into murder machines" thing, but that's not what I'm talking about
No, I mean, she had 4 daughters and only ONE of them happened through, like, normal human reproduction
There was the out-of-wedlock thing with Captain Keyes that made Miranda, of course
Then you got Cortana and The Weapon/Joyeuse who are flash clones of specifically her brain who got turned into AI
Then you have Chloe Hall, the kid she didn't even realize she had because she wasn't supposed to survive this long, who is ALSO one of her flash clones, but ONI sent her to an orphanage and, since she was literally born to be turned into an AI like her other sisters, she has the brain of a full-grown adult AND THEN SOME before she's even supposed to be able to READ. She's so good at hacking and calculations and all the other stuff an AI is supposed to do that she skipped outta the orphanage and, until Empty Throne, worked for the kig-yar mafia cooking the books for one of their casinos.
...
Man, Halsey's family is fucked up, it's not exactly a ringing endorsement when the normalest of your kids was literally created to kill a different one of your children who went insane and SUCCESSFULLY took over the galaxy for like a year. And your other two kids are, as of present-day lore, "dead from pulling a stupid stunt that didn't even work" and "a 10-year-old who's already an ex-gangster on the run from ONI in a Prowler that the dead previous owner bought on eBay"
crack halo headcanon: dr halsey disowned cortana after she announced her plans to take over the world like a supervillan
like she literally sent her an email going "your disowned bitch"
(/j)
Thinking about the Spartan-II program again and like. There are obviously so many crazy details Fall of Reach specifically makes it difficult to overlook or consider trivial. But I think the hands down craziest detail is Halsey wasn’t even with ONI up until like Augmentation, not technically. She was a contractor. She was contracted to do all that shit. Around the time of augmentation she gets officially hired to be head of ONI’s science division, but she even admits in her journal it’s probably more ONI covering their own ass and keeping her where there’s several dozen sniper rifles perched nearby. It really goes to show what an imperialist military hegemony the UNSC is that they let a project being led by a scientific contractor jusy kidnap 100+ children from all corners of the human diaspora with few questions asked and no doubt dozens of other heads and at least a platoon of military personnel to assist her.
Palmer: (into coms) Alright Buck, listen, Halsey found a secret tunnel out of that tower. it was used by a former prisoner and was forgotten over time.
Buck: (through Coms) Ok, what do I do, Doc?
Halsey: Push the gray brick in the back of the fireplace.
Buck: (through coms)Sweet freedom, here I-(burning sound)-OOOWWWWW!!!
Halsey: (flat expression) Put out the fire first...
Starring Steve Downes, Jen Taylor, and Keith David.
October 2558. Cortana has awakened countless Guardian custodes, ancient Forerunner constructs she intends to use to enforce an imperial peace on the peoples of the galaxy.
After Fireteam Osiris rescues the Master Chief and Blue Team from the renegade artificial intelligence’s clutches, the Spartans return to Sanghelios. As they await the arrival of the UNSC Infinity, two legendary heroes recount all that has transpired in the years since their last meeting….
I don't think some players understand how much Cortana is like Dr. Halsey and that might be why they don't understand how she got where she was in Halo 5: Guardians.
"Oh She betrayed Humanity!! Look how many people she killed"
Military ... Military. As far as my knowledge it's been mostly UNSC and other species military.
Civilian personnel that was at the UNSC bases, "acceptable casualties"
The exception to this would be the Brute home world, but I can't remember if they're a military society. Honestly my knowledge of the Brutes is limited.
The military forces of the universe see Cortana and her Guardians as a threat, and they're going to treat her as one.
And she knows this.
As for the deaths that occurred in the rising of the Guardians, more "acceptable casualties".
The protection power a Guardian hold is worth the amount of lives it took to raise it.
People tend to forget Cortana is made from the cloned brain of and spent the first couple of years of her life WITH Dr. Halsey.
Every choice Cortana is making, Dr. Halsey would have made just the same.
Dr Halsey kidnap children, to make into the perfect super soldiers to fight insurrectionist and to prevent an all out war.
Also I would like to note that Cortana knew this information, about John and the other Spartans being kidnapped, in chose not to inform John of this.
Sacrifice the Spartans, their childhood and in some cases lives, for better of everyone.
Dr. Halsey is ONI's lead scientist the mastermind behind the SPARTAN-II project, their MJOLNIR armor, and the literal brain behind Cortana and the Weapon. Arrogant but brilliant, she is a genius and she knows it, which is why, despite her questionable actions, she is continually called upon by ONI and the UNSC for her invaluable expertise. Halsey routinely ignores orders and bypasses restrictions, believing her goals to be above limitations, much to the chagrin of her superiors, and in particular, her nemesis Margaret Parangosky. Her professional ambitions would come at the cost of her personal relationships, creating a strained relationship between herself and her daughter, Miranda Keyes. Halsey's input and expertise were essential to turn the tide of the Human-Covenant war, though at great cost. Halsey's actions, questionable though they were, effectively saved humanity from total destruction by the Covenant. After the end of the war, she was declared a war criminal for her actions by ONI. However, as the threat of the Banished and Created began to rise, she was recommissioned to serve the UNSC against their new foes.
Halsey was a child prodigy, completing her schooling at elite educational institutions at an advanced rate. By fifteen, she was already working on her second doctoral thesis. Halsey caught the eye of the Office of Naval Intelligence when she challenged Dr. Elias Carver's theory predicting that social order in the Outer Colonies would break into rebellion within twenty years. With her corrections, Halsey predicted that the colonies would rebel much sooner without immediate intervention, which would lead to at least thirty years of war and the deaths of five billion people. She brought her findings to ONI, only to discover that they already came to the same conclusion and intended to recruit her. It was a ploy--ONI showed Halsey the stakes by making her see the results for herself--but one that ultimately worked.
Halsey accepted the offer and was relocated to Reach at the age of eighteen, tasked with coming up with a way to quell rebellion in the Outer Colonies. She was drawn to the ORION project, a previous UNSC effort to create genetically-modified supersoliders to suppress rebel forces. Halsey concluded that the project's failure was linked to the ages of the candidates, whose bodies were not as malleable. The best candidates needed to be indoctrinated, fully compliant, and both physically and mentally malleable. The ideal candidates, therefore, were prepubescent children.
With ONI's approval, Halsey devised the ethically and morally questionable plan to kidnap exceptional children to be used as the candidates for what she dubbed the SPARTAN-II project. With the help of Jacob Keyes, she personally interviewed some of the candidates, eventually selecting seventy-five children. A few months later, she gave final approval to begin the kidnappings, replacing the children with flash-clones likely to die so that their loved ones did not look for them. This was also when she parted with Keyes with whom she had spent months with and developed a growing fondness. When the children were collected, she explained her intentions for them, and personally oversaw the years of training that followed.
Seven years later, while the Spartans were nearing the end of their basic training and the start of the risky augmentations, Halsey met Keyes again at a conference. During this reunion, Halsey became pregnant with their daughter, Miranda.
While Halsey wished to delay the augmentation procedures to make them safer, she was under the duel time restrictions of the impending rebellion and the fact that ONI wished to see the results of her efforts--threatening to replace her if she did not produce results soon. Thus, the augmentations protocol continued as scheduled. On February 28, 2525, she gave birth to her daughter, whom she left to the care of others almost immediately to oversee the Spartan augmentations. On March 10, the procedures began. Ultimately, only thirty-three children were augmented successfully, with another twelve who had survived but were rendered so disabled that they could not continue their training. Another thirty died.
In 2525, the intention of using the Spartans against insurrectionists was derailed by the discovery of the Covenant on Harvest. Realizing the greater danger this alien enemy posed, she began introducing the Spartans to the armor she designed for their use.
In the years that followed, Halsey would continued to advise the UNSC in its efforts to combat the Covenant. On March 24, 2549, she completed the final testing for an AI neutral interface addition to the Spartan's armor, which perceived as the final necessary upgrade. Against several civilian laws and military regulations, Halsey flashed-cloned herself twenty times in an effort to harvest the clones' brains and use them as the basis for a pool of smart AIs. The first AI to come from Halsey's experiment was Cortana, who took on the appearance of Halsey as a young woman. Cortana's first words were the words spoken to Halsey by her mother in Italian after a game of chess, years earlier: "When the game is over, the king and pawn go into the same box." Halsey permitted Cortana to choose the Spartan who she would be paired with, and both agreed that John-117, with whom Halsey shared a close relationship, was the best.
After the Fall of Reach and the beginning of the Halo events, Halsey would escape to Onyx. She would spend years collecting and researching Forerunner technology, until she was discovered in the shield would and arrested by Serin Osman at the behest of CINCONI Admiral Margaret Parangosky, who was able to cover up her personal vendetta against Halsey and detain her on Ivanoff Station.
She was eventually released and transferred to the UNSC Infinity to advise on incorporation Forerunner technology into the ship. She was present on Infinity when Forerunner artifacts were discovered on Requiem and brought aboard. Forerunner Prometheans attacked the ship, which lead to Halsey's capture to Requiem. It was here that she decided to join forces with Jul 'Mdama, allowing her to continue to pursue her goal of unlocking Forerunner technology while not being a captive to the UNSC.
During this period, she discovered the Janus Key, given to her by the Librarian. The Janus Key would allow her to access the Absolute Record, which would provide Halsey with the locations of Forerunner artifices all over the galaxy. She and 'Mdama collaborated to find the Absolute Record, which she was only able to access for a brief period before the Record was sent into slipspace by its custodian. Realizing that soon, 'Mdama would have no use for her, Halsey created a trap to contact Infinity and give them his location. Her plan worked, and 'Madam was killed by Jameson Locke and returned to Infinity. By this point, the UNSC required her assistance with the rise of the Guardians. When Cortana and the Created threat were discovered to be behind the Guardian events, Halsey was once again tasked with creating a way to fight back against a new threat.
That solution would take the form of the Weapon, an AI created from one of her stored brains to serve as an exact replica of Cortana. This replica would be able to bypass Cortana's restrictions, capture, and delete her, though it would prove unnecessary when Cortana sacrificed herself.
