Cult of the Last Icon/Author notes

From Halo: Daybreak

Author's Intent[edit | edit source]

The origins of the Cult of the Last Icon lie in a simple question: What enemy would terrify the Covenant the most?

In 2016 or so, I had a number of ideas for conversations between Humans and Elites in the post-War era. These conversations would later coalesce into The Grand Tour and New York City Blues, stories that will see champions of the two species thrown together by odd circumstances and forced to talk their differences out. One idea in particular was a debate over the act of glassing.

Humans of the 26th century see glassing as abhorrent, and it's not hard to see why. It's not just that we Humans are on the receiving end of it. Glassing a planet violates all the moral precepts that 21st-century Humans and 26th-century Humans hold about war. It kills soldiers without giving them so much as the hope of shooting back, it exterminates the civilians and all that they built, and it extinguishes the biosphere. Even a moderate glassing of the populated areas of the planet will likely result in a mass extinction event, let alone the full "Don't stop until the surface is but glass" treatment that many planets were given.

The Covenant have a different view. They do indeed know that glassing a planet is overkill for any conflict, expensive and wasteful to boot. But they also have a concept of sacrifice, of taking something valuable and sacrificing it for the hope of a better future. Glassing a planet is a moral act then, a declaration that whatever lived upon it was so foul that not even the memory could be allowed to persist. We know that the Covenant have glassed many worlds even before they went to war against Humanity, and in the conversation, I wanted the Elite to confront the Human with an enemy that gives even the Human pause.

So. What enemy strikes fear into the heart of the Covenant? That's a very particular question. You can hate an enemy because of a disagreement. If an enemy destroyed Forerunner artefacts or threatened Covenant populations, the Covenant would hate them, but not necessarily fear them. Pear is more primal. Fear is a response to a danger that threatens many things that one holds dear, and which cannot easily be fought. Fear is a feeling of helplessness in the face of malice or entropy.