Deadguy
Well-Known Member
The 405th appeared in Halo 2, here's the Halopedia entry for it's background:
The 405th is based out of Diego Garcia. They arrived on scene during the Covenant attack of Mombasa, Kenya on Earth. They went on to fight on the city streets of New Mombasa valiantly[1].
The 405th assisted the Master Chief in the destruction of a Scarab that was moving through the city. Members of this unit then traveled to Installation 05 along with the Chief aboard the UNSC In Amber Clad.
The 405th were Marines.
In terms of Service, the ODST are special forces Marines, but the Spartans aren't actually Marines themselves.
I've seen discussions of possibly doing flight crew costumes (from Pillar of Autumn, as an example), which would make them Navy personnel.
In the United states, the Marine corps is a part of the Navy, not the other way around.
So... this presents a bit of a problem...
We COULD suggest that parts of the 405th were separated from the rest in-order to assist with the top-secret secondary Spartan-2 project with a new codename ("Orion" was the codename for the secret Spartan-1 project). It would make sense in military terms, if the folks pulled from the 405th were given a separate designation, but we COULD ignore that, claiming that the marine members of our group are unaware that they were separated, and operated under the belief that the rest of the 405th was destroyed in combat when they were deployed to Harvest to protect the colonies from Covenant.
Perhaps when Reach had been glassed, and the first ring discovered, the Spartans and 405th Marines were loaded onto a ship to secretly come to the aid of John-117 on the ring, but they were arriving just as the ring was destroyed and were forced to immediately jump into slipspace, but not before being slammed by debris. The damage caused them to experience slipspace problems that projected them into the past (current date -20 years). The ship they were on (make up name here) is all they had and it was severely damaged, they have spent the last 20 years limping the ship home to Earth, in-and-out of slipspace, while attempting to follow the Cole protocol, to warn Earth of the incoming Covenant forces and assist in Earth's defense.
While nearing Earth, with no communications availible to us, and noticing the obvious lack of MAC orbital gun platforms around the planet, it was beleived that the Earth must have already fallen to Covenant forces. Knowing our ship was failling, as a security measure to keep the technology out of covenant hands, it was aimed into the Sun, and specially modified pelican dropships brought the 405th to Earth to face the covenant threat on the ground. Instead, we found the Earth as it is now.
We, ourselves, were not part of the top command structure on the planetary base where our Spartans were trained, we were merely sent off into battle and went MIA in the Halo Universe when we slipstreamed into a different time. This means that we don't know who funded or directed our secret operation, or anything our superiors would have known about. All we know is the project name, and the name assigned to the planet we were on (which might not even be it's true name).
Our Naval crew is the same crew that operated our ship, but the majority of personnel were either Spartans or Marines, and upon discovering that the UNSC hadn't been formed yet, we opted to incorporate the Spartans into the Marines command structure, and stick with the "405th Infantry Division", in memory of the Marines that were beleived to have fallen. The newly unified command structure is Naval based although the Marine ranks are also present in the enlisted ranks.
----
This version answers many questions, and presents us with oppourtunities. If we wish to be officially recognized as "canon" by Bungie, we have to fit into the existing bible and not "rock the boat" by claiming that a whole bunch of spartans exist, and these spartans call themselves part of a Marine Infantry unit that was present in Halo 2 alongside the chief and has documented character names within the game.
The other part that helps with official recognition is that the ship on which we travelled is not one with a known history to it. In fact, everything this story sets out to do is to plant ourselves into the Halo Bible, yet use a bare minimum of copyright infringements allowable to fans wearing fan-created suits.
This isn't a story we have to explain all the time, but it helps to have a single unified event which enables us all to leave the official bungie timeline and create character stories for our characters without infringing on anything that's already been established, PLUS leaves the path wide open for Bungie/M$ to continue to expand the universe without ruining our own stories in the process.
Another option would be to suggest that we named ourselves the 405th, because it has something to do with the planet's name that we were trained on? Or perhaps it was the project's name because the spartans were plucked from the 405th?
In any event, I'm not the only one with ideas here.. let's get to brainstorming.
The 405th is based out of Diego Garcia. They arrived on scene during the Covenant attack of Mombasa, Kenya on Earth. They went on to fight on the city streets of New Mombasa valiantly[1].
The 405th assisted the Master Chief in the destruction of a Scarab that was moving through the city. Members of this unit then traveled to Installation 05 along with the Chief aboard the UNSC In Amber Clad.
The 405th were Marines.
In terms of Service, the ODST are special forces Marines, but the Spartans aren't actually Marines themselves.
I've seen discussions of possibly doing flight crew costumes (from Pillar of Autumn, as an example), which would make them Navy personnel.
In the United states, the Marine corps is a part of the Navy, not the other way around.
So... this presents a bit of a problem...
We COULD suggest that parts of the 405th were separated from the rest in-order to assist with the top-secret secondary Spartan-2 project with a new codename ("Orion" was the codename for the secret Spartan-1 project). It would make sense in military terms, if the folks pulled from the 405th were given a separate designation, but we COULD ignore that, claiming that the marine members of our group are unaware that they were separated, and operated under the belief that the rest of the 405th was destroyed in combat when they were deployed to Harvest to protect the colonies from Covenant.
Perhaps when Reach had been glassed, and the first ring discovered, the Spartans and 405th Marines were loaded onto a ship to secretly come to the aid of John-117 on the ring, but they were arriving just as the ring was destroyed and were forced to immediately jump into slipspace, but not before being slammed by debris. The damage caused them to experience slipspace problems that projected them into the past (current date -20 years). The ship they were on (make up name here) is all they had and it was severely damaged, they have spent the last 20 years limping the ship home to Earth, in-and-out of slipspace, while attempting to follow the Cole protocol, to warn Earth of the incoming Covenant forces and assist in Earth's defense.
While nearing Earth, with no communications availible to us, and noticing the obvious lack of MAC orbital gun platforms around the planet, it was beleived that the Earth must have already fallen to Covenant forces. Knowing our ship was failling, as a security measure to keep the technology out of covenant hands, it was aimed into the Sun, and specially modified pelican dropships brought the 405th to Earth to face the covenant threat on the ground. Instead, we found the Earth as it is now.
We, ourselves, were not part of the top command structure on the planetary base where our Spartans were trained, we were merely sent off into battle and went MIA in the Halo Universe when we slipstreamed into a different time. This means that we don't know who funded or directed our secret operation, or anything our superiors would have known about. All we know is the project name, and the name assigned to the planet we were on (which might not even be it's true name).
Our Naval crew is the same crew that operated our ship, but the majority of personnel were either Spartans or Marines, and upon discovering that the UNSC hadn't been formed yet, we opted to incorporate the Spartans into the Marines command structure, and stick with the "405th Infantry Division", in memory of the Marines that were beleived to have fallen. The newly unified command structure is Naval based although the Marine ranks are also present in the enlisted ranks.
----
This version answers many questions, and presents us with oppourtunities. If we wish to be officially recognized as "canon" by Bungie, we have to fit into the existing bible and not "rock the boat" by claiming that a whole bunch of spartans exist, and these spartans call themselves part of a Marine Infantry unit that was present in Halo 2 alongside the chief and has documented character names within the game.
The other part that helps with official recognition is that the ship on which we travelled is not one with a known history to it. In fact, everything this story sets out to do is to plant ourselves into the Halo Bible, yet use a bare minimum of copyright infringements allowable to fans wearing fan-created suits.
This isn't a story we have to explain all the time, but it helps to have a single unified event which enables us all to leave the official bungie timeline and create character stories for our characters without infringing on anything that's already been established, PLUS leaves the path wide open for Bungie/M$ to continue to expand the universe without ruining our own stories in the process.
Another option would be to suggest that we named ourselves the 405th, because it has something to do with the planet's name that we were trained on? Or perhaps it was the project's name because the spartans were plucked from the 405th?
In any event, I'm not the only one with ideas here.. let's get to brainstorming.