Greetings SotP Community!
We've previously hinted at our plan to eventually include living Forerunners as a playable faction within the mod once the UNSC and Covenant factions are feature and model complete. However, with the imminent release of Halo Wars 2 in February and the eventual release of Halo 6, we strongly believe that 343 is going to bring living Forerunners (who are not the Ur-Didact) back into the Halo universe on their own. We know, for instance, that Forerunner ships will eventually be coming to Halo: Fleet Battles. Why would there be a fleet coming to the tabletop game if there wasn't going to be something occurring in the universe for such a fleet to exist, right?
Because of this likelihood, and the information at hand, we've decided to put those plans on hold and wait for more info to come out of 343 and Spartan Games. It would be a waste of our time to design an entirely new Forerunner faction based on 2 to 4 ships, model and texture 20 to 30 ships and stations, only to have it all be cast out when 343 shows their hand. While that's going to be very depressing news for many of you, as conciliation we've decided to go ahead and reveal how we were going to bring Forerunners back to life in the 2550's. The following is our fanon explanation for why Forerunners were to be a playable faction in the mod. The aim was to create a scenario that was believable given the stated lore, and was self-contained enough that it didn't contradict anything new added to the universe. Welcome to what was to be Sins of the Prophets: Castellum
With Mendicant Bias's conversion to the side of the Gravemind, along with all he knew, the Forerunner plan to use shield worlds as a refuge from the Halos became impossible. At some point not long after this, slipspace travel was restricted to only Lifeworkers, leaving many Forerunner ships stranded in space to await the firing of the rings.
Our "addition" to the lore would be that a single shield world was hastily created following Mendicant's betrayal. Many Lifeworkers set out to find those stranded Forerunner ships, and take their passengers to Shield World Castellum (Latin for refuge/castle/haven). Once there these survivors were placed in stasis inside massive Cryptums where they've slept for the last 100,000 years. The AI construct 151 Momentous Obligation was stationed as the monitor of the shield world, and was tasked with ensuring the Forerunners interred inside be kept alive at all costs.
We know from the Halo Anniversary terminals that the monitors stayed in contact with each other over eons. It's most likely via subspace communications due to the Domain appearing to be completely destroyed when the rings fired. 151 detects the destruction of Shield World 0459 via a subspace comm burst from the installation in 2531. Then another from Halo Installation 04 in 2552. Then again with Halo 04B the same year. When Shield World 0001 (Requiem) is destroyed 151 decides there is a very real possibility that either the Flood have resurfaced, or something else is hunting down and destroying Forerunner worlds. He decides to wake up his masters so that they can prepare to defend themselves, or potentially travel to the Ark to activate the remaining rings once again.
Those coming out of these Cryptums are the Forerunner Remnant. This is a random assortment of Forerunner citizens, not the titans of their empire, just refugees. The number is not incredibly important, but it is comparatively small. Maybe 1 million, maybe less. They are a shadow of their former glory. They are without the Domain, they have limited supplies, resources, and technology. They know nothing about what transpired on Requiem or the Halo rings, only that they may be in danger.
Because of their limited knowledge and starting point, they lack the ability to build massive structures like Halo installations or Shield Worlds. What they can build for ships and structures are only in small numbers, and they rely heavily on sentinel support.
Not only did this fit in very well with the skirmish style games SoaSE provides, but it also fit our story into the stated Halo lore succinctly. This angle could have lead to a whole host of reasons for hostilities or alliances with the “inferior” races. It was also completely self contained.
Obviously this kind of thing would be hard to communicate in a game like SoaSE, so we were going to include a graphic novel that we would produce in digital format with the release that would explain to you why there was suddenly a third Forerunner faction in the mod, and help you understand the characters involved. Unfortunately, over time the artists we enlisted for this part of the mod fell off the project.
Keeping artists involved and engaged is honestly one of the hardest things about working on a large volunteer project like Sins of the Prophets. We managed to find people who like the idea of helping, but then either are unable to stay interested enough to actually get things done, or they run into the usual life issues and lose motivation to continue. Huge swaths of SotP has been plagued by this, and continues to be to this day. Every artist ever attached to the Forerunner side of the mod has fallen off before getting very far along, other than our greenest modeler, Sookendestroy.
So, that was the plan.
While this has been shelved, we are discussing other potential ideas to fill this third faction slot, such as a sentinel faction. We won’t be touching the Created at all (as a faction) until 343 explains more about what Cortana and friends are running around the galaxy with. Right now we only know that they have essentially stole what amounts to outdated space police robots. Below you can see the work our artist Sookendestroy has been doing while we’ve been exploring the idea of sentinel forces under the control of a rampant Forerunner AI.
To make this as clear as possible, we are looking for dedicated portrait artists, modelers, and texture artists. If you’d like to apply, please have examples of your work ready for us to review. Portraits are probably the hardest of these to fill, but we’re looking to include characters like Jul ‘Mdama, Atriox, and Admiral Cole.
If you'd like to contact us about helping out, please either message me, Unikraken, on here, Twitter, or Steam, or you can message the mod proper in the profile area on the upper far right of the page.
This is all so amazing, I love the story, the lore, it's so detailed; and that is just simply amazing. You have my prayers and wishes for a good future on your project fellas, good luck!
finally a playable race that's not unsc and covenant.....
now i wish you guys had a reason to add playable flood now...........
The flood as a playable faction wood just be too over powered especially with their ability to overwhelm those who are unprepared to deal with them.
There would be ways to balance it out. For example flood units/assets could be righteously expensive if not obtained(infected) via other players/npc units.
A shame that you've halted things, it sounded like that idea really would've had potential.
Why do you want to keep your mod hewing so close to the new canon as it is made? There are many (myself included) who would feel that you're making a mistake in doing so.
The Halo narrative/canon is what has driven SotP for years, every ship revealed, detail published, we scrutinize it all and see if it applies to Sins of the Prophets. Canon has been at the core of what we do, and we don't like to break it if we can avoid doing so (of course, we cant always do this). Thus, as the Halo narrative evolves, we want to evolve with it; bringing the new worlds and experiences you see in the games and books as they are released, to life in the unique way Sins allows. We want you to see the epic battles, the titanic vessels, and all the Halo universe has to offer. Fanon has it's merits, without doubt; but in most cases, this one especially (which concerns an entire faction) the Canon is a better rule of thumb.
Some would argue 343's stuff is nothing more than elevated fanon. Frankly any group that allows Karen Traviss to play in their lore has some serious storytelling problems.
hi cole, i have a littleproblem with the mod: i installed the mod and i rnrabled the LAA but every time that i start a game as every faction the game crush immediatly telling me that there is a problem with my LAA, what can i do to solve this problem?
We're still going to eventually be adding the forerunner faction, most likely during the post war period of the mod. The way we introduce them may or may not follow similar events to those above depending on what happens in lore.
As for remaining so close to canon, we at SotP have always tried to stay as close to canon as possible, whether it be our scale, the pace of combat or the precision of our art assets and we feel that following the lore makes the mod a much more fulfilling experience to halo fans who love the expanded universe as much as us.
It just so happens that the reclaimer saga is in the middle of development as we continue our exploration of forerunner design and we feel that they will reveal more ships which could be vital to the development of forerunner fleets. As such we trust 343 to deliver something in the coming months/years and feel it a bit of a waste to develop new ships for the community to get attached to only to remove them at a later date. That time could be used developing more urgent additions to the mod.
Didn't a small amount of forerunners also leave the galaxy before the arrays fired? That would also make sense for the mod and possibly the return in later halo titles.
Fun Fact: If you look close enough at the showcase of forerunner models you can see a single pixel at the bottom left, that is a constructor sentinel, next to the larger pixel of the aggressor sentinel.
I.imgur.com
I noticed that. Though the aggressor is actually a good bit bigger than the constructor.
Also... do I see a war sphinx?
War Spynx? Dont think we have one of those yet lol. Maybe you mean the Retriever Sentinel, the one with the under-slung arms that's meant to rip apart moons.
No no, I mean the silvery thing of a similar size to the retriever, from our view, it's behind and to the right of the vanguard.
I'd guess at a few of what these are, but, I'll hold back.
That's not a War Sphinx; we have an image of them in Halo Mythos along with a few Forerunner ship designs.
hmm, well there's the Retriever and a better model for it, the cannon from halo 4, some concept ships and a contender class lol
Kind of reminds me of the Eldar.
Yeah, a little bit. The eldar are a little bit more organic in design though.
this is one of the best mods for this game and cant wait to see a forerunner faction.
No offense, but on the case of the Forerunners, and the fact that you do want to stay true to canon, couldn't you release the Forerunner faction, (if you do get it done) as a entirely separate mod, for those of us who like the idea, but wouldn't like to wait until 20XX.
I mean, release the Forerunners, as maybe, an different mod, like, Sins Of The Prophets : Forerunner Addon, (NONCANON), or maybe you can just put up a file that would be separate from any full updates?
I'm mainly asking this, because I think that at least, until you guys have the canon info that you need to actually make the update, it would be really cool to have a Remnants faction in-game.
Plus, no offense, but just because there is a fleet coming, doesn't mean that it would be controlled by living Forerunners, for all we know, it could be a Moniter, or some other class Of Forerunner AI, that has A. Taken over a derlict fleet, or B. possibly taken control of a Forerunner ship building station.
I think that was everything I wanted to cover, thank you.
Question: are you guys going to develop rebel factions for the main factions of the mod?
Thats is great. No rush in there. The only thing i wish is to see the CSO class ingame.
that would be hard because it will broke the game engine
So.....