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It is this universe where the Halo video game series: Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo Wars, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 4, Halo: Spartan Assault, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo: Spartan Strike, Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Wars 2, and Halo Infinite take place. In addition to the games, a number of Halo novels and other media including audio dramas, comic books, tabletop games, films and an anime collection have been released. The media beyond the game series expands into the Halo universe timeline before and after the events of the games, as well as running concurrently with the games' timeline. United Nations Space Command The emblem of the UNSC. Main article: United Nations Space Command In the 26th century, most of humanity is ruled by the Unified Earth Government (UEG). As most of the material from the Halo universe is from the ongoing war we see the future mainly through the eyes of the UEG's military arm, the United Nations Space Command (UNSC). During the events of Halo 2 and Halo 3, the UNSC fought the Covenant over Earth in a last-ditch attempt to protect the human race. The events of Halo: Reach are fought defending the planet Reach, the UNSC's former military headquarters. The UNSC was formed by the United Nations when overpopulation on Earth and conflict in the Sol System started becoming a severe problem in the early 22nd century. In the wake of the Interplanetary War in the 2160s, the UNSC became the military and space exploratory arm of the newly-established Unified Earth Government. After the emergence of the Covenant threat, the UNSC was given power over the UEG and its colonial go The Flood (called The Parasite by the Covenant) is a species of virulent, parasitic organisms that thrive by consuming other sentient life of sufficient biomass, no matter where in the universe, thus leading Forerunners to the creation of the Halo Array. The Flood appears to be a hive or communal mind, existing in several stages that eventually lead into the creation of a central intelligence known as the Gravemind. The Flood grow and reproduce via the assimilation of other beings, utilizing corpses and acquiring any biomass (including both animal and plant) in order to spread. They are incapable of sexual reproduction, instead they fester inside a host until a certain time period, after which they explode and many new Flood are given off. Once a Gravemind is formed however, the Flood advance to a stage where they no longer require hosts for this, only biomass and calcium, which they require to feed on, and to build bodies with. Once they have advanced, they create hives which can produce thousands of Flood inside large pustules on walls and other surfaces, which act as incubators. During this stage, the Flood are able to build their own life forms using captured biomass and calcium deposits. The Flood continue in this fashion recurrently until either everything is devoured, or until they are stopped, the former usually occurring. In modern times, little is known about their origin, except that they arrived from another galaxy and fought both prehistoric humans and Forerunners, eventually defeating the latter. The Forerunners discovered and then fought them until they were overwhelmed after centuries of war. Faced with the Flood spreading throughout the galaxy and consuming every sentient being, the Forerunners created seven artificial rings called the Halos, galactic superweapons in the shape of enormous rings, to contain and hopefully stop the Flood from ever spreading. The point of the rings was to wipe out all sentient life, thus starving the Flood of the sufficient biomass required for them to continue spreading. Through their own interpretation of Forerunner artifacts, the Covenant believed these rings were actually devices that allowed the Forerunner to transcend this plane of existence into godlike state, and thus they seek to do the same by activating them once more, not realizing they would inadvertently wipe out all sentient Although it seemed the plan had been successful at eliminating the Flood threat, samples of the organism kept on the rings for study were released on at least two of the installations through accidental means, putting the galaxy once again at risk of complete destruction by the parasite. Once the dominant civilization in the Milky Way, the Forerunners reached unparalleled technological advancement over 100,000 years before the Human-Covenant War. Believing to be charged by the mysterious Precursors with protecting less advanced civilizations in the galaxy, they stumbled upon the Flood and fought a three-hundred-year long war to stop the genocidal parasitic species from overrunning the galaxy. When it looked as if they were going to fail at that task, they built and activated the Halo Array - sterilizing the entire galaxy of sentient life including themselves, starving the Flood into submission, and repopulating the galaxy again with those few species saved from extinction.[1] All that remains now of the Forerunners are the ruins of their ancient temples and cities, a few scattered pieces of functional technology, and their automated combat and maintenance constructs. Their technological brilliance, combined with a garbled version of the Halo activation, led to the Covenant's religion revering the Forerunners as deities, and that this state could be achieved again by activating the Halos. In turn, these attempts led to the Human-Covenant War, and the eventual secession of the Sangheili and their alliance with humanity to stop the Covenant. The Insurrectionists are various rebel groups opposed to the rule of the UNSC throughout human space who seek the colonies' liberation from the Unified Earth Government's influence. Following the rapid volumetric growth of the region of space controlled by the human race throughout the 25th century, the UEG found it increasingly difficult to maintain its hold over the Outer Colonies, hundreds of which were scattered across exceedingly large swathes of space. By 2490, the Outer Colonies surpassed the core worlds in number by several hundred. Despite their more discrete composition, the Outer Colonies proved an ample breeding ground for a strong nationalist sentiment among their citizens which in turn led to their perceiving the Earth government—and the UNSC which imposed its will—as a draconian outside force. In 2513, the UNSC initiated Operation: TREBUCHET, one of the largest operations in UNSC history; spanning ten years and costing hundreds of thousands of lives, the goal was to root out the Insurrectionist activity as a whole, while not completely gone, died down during the Covenant War. After the end of the Human-Covenant conflict, many insurrectionist movements such as the United Rebel Front which had ceased their operations during the war began to resurface. A number of colonies refused the offer of peace and cut all ties with the UNSC, which, according to them, had abandoned them during the war. Of major significance in the post-war era was the rise of the New Colonial Alliance, founded by rogue UNSC Admiral Mattius Drake, which in early 2553 attempted to hijack the newly-commissioned UNSC Infinity.