History Sandbox / ProjectDaybreak

* ArchaeologicalArmsRace: The Covenant and humanity are actually relative latecomers to the galactic scramble for Forerunner artifacts, as many sites have already been stripped of all useful technology by even older civilizations (with disappointed Covenant relic-hunters usually opting to blame the Optem in particular).

** The Xar-Shaa are a hermaphroditic ocean-dwelling Covenant fringe species that resemble amoebas covered in multiple fine tendrils. While young Xar-Shaa are amphibious and capable of full locomotion, mature Xar-Shaa will meld themselves together into what are basically giant hive-minded coral reefs that remain mostly stationary and require advanced technology to venture beyond the seafloor. Additionally, the Xar-Shaa have immense difficulty with any form of audio-based communication, having evolved to rely instead on changes in tendril coloration to communicate with anyone they are not currently melded to.

** The Cheslile are a mysterious species that have evolved to live within gas giants.

** Humanity's primary ally in the post-war years is the Concord of Reconciliation (''Daybreak''[='s=] equivalent to canon's Swords of Sanghelios), a post-Covenant coalition comprised of hundreds of semi-independent polities and organizations loosely organized under the rule of the Arbiter and his inner circle, with one of their main goals being to establish a viable and less oppressive alternative to the failed Covenant.

* VestigialEmpire: While many post-Schism groups call themselves some variant of "Covenant", the polity that probably has the best claim to the title doesn't use the name at all; the Strewn Shore is a community of High Charity refugees led by a collection of high-ranking San'Shyuum officials who consider themselves the Covenant's government-in-exile (since most of the surviving San'Shyuum officials in other factions have ended up being reduced to figureheads at best). Ironically, the Strewn Shore is actually a founding member of the Concord of Reconciliation, though its leadership does not always see eye-to-eye with the Arbiter and his inner circle.

* VestigalEmpire: While many post-Schism groups call themselves some variant of "Covenant", the polity that probably has the best claim to the title doesn't use the name at all; the Strewn Shore is a community of High Charity refugees led by a collection of high-ranking San'Shyuum officials who consider themselves the Covenant's government-in-exile (since most of the surviving San'Shyuum officials in other factions have ended up being reduced to figureheads at best). Ironically, the Strewn Shore is actually a founding member of the Concord of Reconciliation, though its leadership does not always see eye-to-eye with the Arbiter and his inner circle.

* TransplantedHumans: And not just humans! Many worlds across the galaxy contain organisms and even entire ecosystems that have an obvious off-world evolutionary history; Reach's entire biosphere seems to have been transplanted from Earth millions of years ago, while the Sangheili discovered multiple lifeforms originating from their own homeworld during their initial colonization of space. That said, the only known sapient species that seems to be "native" to multiple worlds is the Sharquoi.

* TheFederation: Humanity's primary ally in the post-war years is the Concord of Reconciliation (''Daybreak''[='s=] equivalent to canon's Swords of Sanghelios), a post-Covenant coalition comprised of hundreds of semi-independent polities and organizations loosely organized under the rule of the Arbiter and his inner circle, with one of their main goals being to establish a viable and less oppressive alternative to the failed Covenant.

* WeAreStrugglingTogether: The Concord of Reconciliation may be united in its goal to defeat the Covenant Loyalists, but its members have deep, ''deep'' disagreements on what a post-Covenant world should look like. Indeed, such disagreements end up exploding into outright civil war in the 2570s.

* {{Ultraterrestrials}}: The Kig-Yar of ''Daybreak'' descend from theropod dinosaurs that were transplanted from Earth by an unknown civilization millions of years ago.

* ArchaeologicalArmsRace: The Covenant and humanity are actually relative latecomers to the galactic scramble for Forerunner artifacts, as many sites have already been stripped of all useful technology by even older civilizations.

* ArcheologicalArmsRace: The Covenant and humanity are actually relative latecomers to the galactic scramble for Forerunner artifacts, as many sites have already been stripped of all useful technology by even older civilizations.

* StarfishAliens: The Covenant classify sapient species along a "Congruent-Enigmatic" scale, with "Congruent" being roughly equivalent to the human concept of anthropomorphic sapience (but using the Sangheili and San'Shyuum as the baseline instead), and "Enigmatic" being this trope in its purest form. Besides the [[TheWormThatWalks Lekgolo]], [[InsectoidAliens Yanme'e]], and [[LivingGasbag Huragok]] from canonical ''Halo'', a number of ''Daybreak''-original intelligent species also fall on the "Enigmatic" side of the scale:

* MulticulturalAlienPlanet: Much of the worldbuilding emphasizes that in an empire as big as the Covenant, there is going to be a great deal of cultural diversity no matter how much standardization one may try to impose; even just in terms of language, the Sangheili alone have multiple (and not always mutually intelligible) common dialects. Much effort has also been put in to avert PlanetOfHats for individual Covenant species; while some cultural traits are definitely much more common in some races than others, there is still a great deal of internal variation. For example, Kig-Yar worlds are described as having "virtually every form of government imaginable", but just "contained in a highly loose, panarchic framework".

Website/SpaceBattlesDotCom hosts the threads for both ''Daybreak''[='s=] [[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/project-daybreak-worldbuilding-thread-halo-sau.761701/ worldbuilding]] and [[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/project-daybreak-snippet-thread-halo-sau.825444/ snippets]], and the project also has its own [[http://daybreak.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page wiki]].

Website/SpaceBattlesDotCom hosts the threads for both ''Daybreak''[='s=] [[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/project-daybreak-worldbuilding-thread-halo-sau.761701/ worldbuilding]] and [[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/project-daybreak-snippet-thread-halo-sau.825444/ snippets]], and the project also has its own [[http://daybreak.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page project wiki]].

* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13691892/1/Conversations-From-The-Universe-The-Turning-Points Conversations From the Universe: The Turning Points]]'' (also posted on the main worldbuilding thread) by Quirel: "In 2552, the war against the Covenant ended, and a new era dawned in 2553. Mankind found itself in uncharted territory. The documents contained in this folder tell stories how Humans and aliens lived and learned to adapt as the galaxy passed through the most tumultuous year in its history. There is more going on beneath the surface than even you know."

* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13657670/2/Halo-Ten-Hours Halo: Ten Hours]]'' by [=ThePeteFiles=]: An ODST Combat Element Team responds to the Covenant Invasion of Mombasa in 2552.

* ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13504811/1/Through-the-Bush-Nothing-But-Jackal Quirel's Through the Bush, Nothing But Jackal]]'' (also posted on the snippet thread) by Quirel: "Harvest. 2526. It's a brand new war against a brand new enemy, and the UNSC is still probing the Covenant's capabilities. A team of intrusion specialists, India-2, are sent to scout a Covenant facility only for the operation to go horribly wrong. Alone, outnumbered, it is up to the survivors to save themselves... and learn how the Covenant knew they were coming."

!!''Project: Daybreak'' contains examples of:

''Project: Daybreak'' is an collaborative (semi-)[[AlternateUniverseFic alternate universe]] ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' fanon project originally created by Quirel and Eternarch as sort of an answer to what they viewed as the limitations of Creator/ThreeFourThreeIndustries' take on the franchise. As such, ''Daybreak'' seeks to establish what its creators view as a more organic development of the ideas and stories from the original Creator/{{Bungie}}-era games and novels.