Phoenix Log

A Phoenix Log is a file found in Halo Wars 2 that contains background information. Some of the logs describe leaders and units, and others contain information about historical events. They are unlocked by collecting them during campaign missions and by playing games on the multiplayer maps.

Refugia
The Ark was originally created to build Halos, gigantic weapons that wipe out all sentient life in order to sarve the parasitic Flood of life to infect. This desperate measure conflicted with the Forerunners' roles as custodians of the galaxy, and so it was decided that the Ark would also preserve examples of doomed species so they could be reseeded once the Flood had been eradicated.

The surface of the Ark was divided up into vast refugia sections, twelve on the Central Hub and twenty across the large, petal-like Spires that extend out from the center. Each refugia recreates the environments with by hugewalls monitored by Sentinels to protect one ecosystem from polluting another. The Ark monitors and controls weather, temperature and even natural food chains in order to maintain the habitat.

Halo Refugia
This Refugia is at once familiar and otherworldly. Many areas resemble the lands of Earth; lush, verdant landscapes, tranquil sandy beaces where waves lap gently at the shore and stunning waterfalls plunge endlessly over high cliffs.

There is mountainous moorland, jagged rocky slopes and outcroppings covered in a light shrub. But the immense scale of the environment imposes itself, dwarfing each of its Earthly equivalents. The chasms are deeper and darker, the mountains higher and even the sea and sky seem a richer blue than Earth's atmosphere.

As ominous reminders colossal Forerunner bridges bisect the terrain and gigantic unknown structures dominate the skyline, their purposes unknown but their very silence and mystery resonating with power.

The Ark
A gigantic structure situated outside of any known star system, the Ark was constructed by the Forerunners with two guiding principles. First, to fabricate, repair and transport all components of the ringworld installations known collectively as Halo, a weapon designed to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy in a desperate attempt to stop the parasitic Flood. Secondly, it needed to be able to provide a safe and stable habitat for a vast number of life forms collected from across the galaxy.

These two paradigms led to the unique, flower-like design, with immense arms splayed around a central foundry, where the production of the Halo installations occurs. The Ark's surface was covered by vast, world-sizes paddocks called refugia, divided by massive walls and containment barriers to preserve the life forms collected by the Librarian as part of her Conservation Measure, to be reseeded after the Flood had been starved out.

Henry Lamb Research Outpost
The Henry Lamb Research Outpost was the base of a UNSC scientific research expedition to learn about the Ark, both in the interest of scientific advancement and self-preservation from future Halo threats.

The expedition was spurred on by the re-activation of the existing Halo array in 2555 by the Ark's Monitor, Tragic Solitude. A team travelled to the Ark and stopped Tragic Solitude's plan to aggressively mine the Earth for materials to rebuild the Ark, which had been damaged as a result of the battle that ended the Covenant War.

In 2557, a new team travelled through the portal near New Mombasa in their ship Eden Rising, with the goal of activating dormant Retriever Sentinels in order to start repairing the Ark. These researchers established an outpost expansion in February of 2558. In October that year, the portal to Earth closed, followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of The Banished fleet. The base and its outlying facilities were all razed by the Banished attack.

Forerunner Sentinels
Sentinels were created by Forerunners as automated worker and fense drones to maintain and protect their installations from transgressors. Although designed without the independent intelligence of Monitors, or the UNSC's smart AI, they remain highly adaptable and a formidable foe to anything they recognize as a threat to the Ark.

The Foundry at the center of the Ark is populated by Retriever and Assembler Sentinels, who extract resources and minerals from the small moon held there. THe mining capabilities of the ship-size Retriever Sentinels can be highly destructive when used against trespassers, but it is the smaller Aggressor Sentinels that are primarily used for enforcement.

When deployed in great numbers, these Sentinels will swoop in and attack as one in a perfectly coordinated wave, swiftly removing any threats while leaving the Ark undamaged.

The Cartographer
The Cartographer is one of many identically named map facilities on the Ark, updated in real time with the latest dynamic cartographic and diagnostic information. This includes security measures activated on the Ark, any required maintenance and its artificial sun, and the status of the Halo array and any new installations being forged in the Foundry.

In the wrong hands the Cartographer is an incredibly dangerous source of information, so it is hidden deep in a remote wasteland, heavily guarded by Sentinels and protected by huge defensive barriers. The Sentinels guarding the Cartographer are much more likely to attack interlopers on sight rather than wait for provocation and only someone with the appropriate command clearance can access the Cartographer without a fight.

Amber Refugia
A stranslucent amber-like material covers much of the terrain in this unforgiving Refugia. Petrified rivers and lakes form vast, planar surfaces which are only broken by the angular, jutting rock formations that puncture the surface.

Fractures that have splintered into deep chasms reveal the complex Forerunner infrastructure below, and geometrical veins form these underlying structures can be seen striping the upper layers. In places the strong but brittle amber has sheared and degraded into sand, which is then whipped up and sculpted by the wind into dune seas where life struggles to take root.

What life can survive here is extremely alien; huge and bizarre flora spring up through cracks in the rocks, swaying in the breeze and belching spores into the atmosphere if disturbed.

Particle Cannon
The Particle Cannon is a long dormant but extremely powerful Forerunner weapon, build in the early stages of the Ark's construction when it was most vulnerable to a pre-emptive attack by the Flood.

Once the Ark's construction had been completed, it lay dormant until its location was discovered in the Cartographer by Professor Anders. The cannon has been designed to protect against orbital attacks and draws its power directly from the Ark itself through a series of conduits located underneath the Ark's surface. Ionized particles are charged until they reach high-density, allowing it to fire an incredibly long range and continuous particle beam at its target.

Proto-Forerunner Refugia
The Ark continues to rebuild itself after the destruction wrought by the battle that ended the Covenant War. Like icebergs, the Forerunner constructions on the surface are only a tiny part of the whole.

Partial-printing creates a terraced landscape of plateaus supported by colossal columns and the substructure of the Ark dominates the space with gigantic vertigo-inducing cavities that allow views deep into the superstructure beneath. The surface demonstrattes the building techniques and foundations of a refugia still being terraformed, with the layered strata giving a tentalizing hint of the Forerunners' unfinished design.

Even incomplete, the exposed vein-like layers have a raw beauty of their own and complement the sleek and sculptured metallic lines of finished Forerunner architecture nearby. Mineral deposits with exotic material properties scatter the surface, and new paths are created by massive shifting plates, their purpose known only to the long dead race that created them.

The Foundry
The Foundry is a massive circular machine situated at the epicenter of the Ark for the purpose of constructing and repairing the ringworlds that make up the Halo Array.

Within its center it holds a mineral-rich moon in a powerful gravitational field that is mined for resources by giant Retriever Sentinels, then used by Assembler Sentinels to build components of a Halo. The Halo Array is always made of seven ringworlds and should one be destroyed the Ark starts building a replacement.

Once a Halo is stable, it is released to the same location as the destroyed Halo to replace it while Sentinels continue to work on it. Of the seven ringworlds that make up the Halo Array, six have originated on the Ark, while the seventh was constructed on an earlier version of the Ark and later reconstructed to fit the new design.

Halo
A Halo is an artificial, planet-sized ringworld weapon, created by the ancient forerunner race as a weapon to combat the parasitic entity known as the Flood.

Despite milennia of scientific and philosophical advancements, the Forerunners were unable to stop the spread of the Flood as it propagated across numerous life-forms through infection. After many defeats, the only answer was to starve the Flood by denying its ability to infect anything - by destroying all sentient life.

The Ark was build to construct, maintain and activate the ringworlds that make up the Halo Array weapon, and seven ringworlds were launched at strategic points across the galaxy. The Halo Array was fired, wiping out all sentient life without damaging the inhabitant's worlds and the Flood retreated.

However, towards the end of the Human-Covenant war, the Halo Array once again became an ever present menace, the weapon to end all wars.

The Control Room
The Ark has several supraluminal communication towers with the purpose of transmitting data to and from the weapon installations that make up the Halo Array.

Each Halo has a designated Control Room which activates the Halo's weapon systems upon receiving the data, as well as emergency shutdown protocols to disable the systems and halt the Halo's activation.

Like the Cartographer, these Control Rooms are often protected by a large energy barrier and patrolled by high security Sentinels to protect from misuse. The Control Room is integral to the maintenance of the Halo's weapon systems, and the interior leads deep down to the Halo's superstructure in a maze of winding tunnels and shifting walls.

Ashes
The wreckage of a Covenant freighter lies scattered across the amber wasteland.

This hostile environment, blood-red and battered by harsh winds, is rendered even crueler by the scorched and smoking remains of a Covenant freighter, blasted out of the sky by Forerunner defenses. The impact trench created by the crash leads down into a deep crater, where the force of the collision has destroyed the top layer of the refugia, revealing the proto-Forerunner substructure running underneath.

Frontier
Verdant grasslands overrun a Forerunner facility suspended on the edge of the world.

A clash of familiar and alien environments characterize this battlefield; lush grassland and sandy beaches are punctuated by several monolithic Forerunner structures, creating unnatural 'islands' among the landscape. The sleek but complex designs of the Forerunner ramps and lightbridges that branch off from these islands form multiple paths over the natural chasms of the environment as factions clash to gain control over valuable Forerunner resources.

Rift
The battles fought at this Forerunner array will echo through history.

A monolithic Forerunner structure dominates this environment, sitting atop a curning whirlpool that harnesses the power of subterranean rivers and waterfalls that flow into the ocean. Though one side remains unsullied by the war, the other is pitted with large breaches in the surface as the Banished tunnel downwards to plunder the Ark's valuable resources.

Vault
Lush woodlands conceal an immense Forerunner storage facility.

"The storage facility was only a couple of klicks out as we pushed through the woods, and after a long exhausting march I could feel the rest of the team relax a little. After the alien sights we had seen, the familiarity of a cool breeze and the smell of those large trees was a comfort, and for a short while we could almost forget where we were.

That was our first mistake. Something shimmered out of the corner of my eye and lifted Dimitri into the air. He lurched violently to the left as the cloaked Elite swung his sword free from his victim and Floyd shouted 'Elite!'. We fired off several rounds at the spot where Dimitri had been standing, but the Elite had already melted back into the trees. We still outnumbered him seven to one, but I wasn't about to follow the cloaked Elite into the trees so he could pick us off one by one.

We popped our grenades.

A minute later, we slowly pushed through the burning trees, picking splinters out of our uniforms. There was no sign of the Elite, but the shallow stream beyond was streaked with purple blood. I collected Dimitri's tags and blinked to get the sting of smoke out of my eyes. We wouldn't forget where we were again."

Journal of Private D. Wood

Forerunner Power Node
Power resource point

The Forerunners build the Ark to be completely self-sustaining, and much of its power lies in the vast subterranean web of power structures beneath its surface. These external power nodes were designed to provide auxiliary power during repairs of emergencies, giving those in control of them a steady flow of power resources.

On this remote installtion, light years from any support, both the UNSC and the Banished have realized the strategic importance of Forerunner power nodes. Eschewing the Covenant's reverence for Forerunner artifacts, Atriox has no compunction of taking control of them for his own ends, and many a battle involves a desperate scramble to capture power nodes before the enemy can.

Agressor Sentinel
Forerunner Sentinels that can be called in by Anders to cause area denial.

Though their primary purpose is to maintain, repair and repair the Ark, these Forerunner Sentinels can be summoned by Professor Anders, who has found a way to deploy them in the service of the UNSC. Once called, the Sentinels swarm in to a targeted location and attack any hostiles in the area with sentinel beams, remaining and causing area denial for a duration before returning to their jobs on the Ark. Any Sentinels that are destroyed emit an EMP blast, crippling hostile vehicles temporarily.

The Sentinels are worker drones with basic AI, created by the Forerunners to safeguard their stations as well as perform repairs and maintenance. There is a large variety of Sentinels in both purpose, size and appearance. There are small Constructor drones used to maintain Forerunner structures, huge Retrievers used for mining and Agressor drones for attacking any perceived threat. They Sentinels will only attack if they perceive a present threat; otherwise they will happily ignore strangers and carry on with their work.

Forerunner Control Tower
Multi-purpose control structures

As the Ark's name suggests, it was designed to play host to an incredible variety of life collected from across the galaxy. This almost inconceivable volume of biodiversity necessitated a flexible environmental system on the Ark as the Forerunners prepared for the galactic reseeding of life after the Halo Array was activated.

On a practical level this meant that all habitable surface area on the Ark could be covered in an environment to match any life-sustaining planet in the galaxy.

Atmospheres, soil and vegetation makeups, bodies of water or other liquids, and even gravitational conditions could be custom-set in areas as large or as small as needed to sustain specimens from a particular planet.

These environmental settings are modified using a network of Control Towers. These towers generate and maintain the surrounding environment around by repurposing preassembled landscape blocks, adjust hydrological features and atmosphere composition for optimal growth conditions, and ensure that invasive species from connected Refugia are removed or eliminated. In addition, low-order life necessary to replicate a functioning biome can also be grown at each Control Tower, using the Ark's vast genomic archive.

When an environment is complete, only a small percentage of each Control Tower remains visible above ground in order to minimize interference with the new local wildlife while still allowing for data gathering on the surrounding area.

Today, these Control Towers lie mostly dormant. But with new visitors to the Ark and the possibility of new uses for the Ark's scientific and military capabilities, the towers offer literally world-building power to whoever controls this ancient installation.