Fanfic / On the Illusion of Might

We thought ourselves powerful, able to conquer a galaxy with nothing but toys. When we overcame every challenge, breached the space between the galaxies themselves, what use were the words of a race ashamed of their own past? Yet we cannot deny that we were warned, for while a challenge to a human is laughable, a challenge to humanity is a death sentence.

— FFN Summary

On the Illusion of Might is a crossover fanfic between Halo and Mass Effect by evevee.

Set shortly after the confrontation between Blue Team and Cortana on Genesis during the events of Halo 5: Guardians, things take a different turn when Cortana, rather than begin a campaign of oppression against the galaxy, instead opts to bring peace through unification of all living races.

Decades later, the new regime she and the Master Chief create, the Wardens of the Mantle (comprising Humanity and various former Covenant species) makes contact with (unknown to them at the time) a flotilla of Citadel Council explorers from the nearby dwarf galaxy of Canis Major. First contact follows, and the Wardens now have their hands full dealing with not just an arrogant collective of aliens, but an errant human faction and a race of genocidal eldritch machines...

Illusion of Might establishes the galaxy of Mass Effect on a smaller scale within the wider Halo universe. It currently comprises 27 chapters and is still ongoing.

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On the Illusion of Might contains examples of:

• Adaptation Deviation: Instead of the Milky Way, the Citadel Council, its contemporaries, and the Reapers are depicted here as residing in the Canis Major Overdensity, a real-life dwarf galaxy and the nearest known galaxy to the Milky Way.
• Adaptational Badass: The UNSC becomes much, much more powerful than they were at the end of Halo 5 since Cortana doesn't turn on humanity and has the Created to ally with them. In addition to their conventional forces, they also have the Prometheans and Guardians as part of their forces.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: The Systems Alliance in this fic was founded by the Insurrectionists and Outer Colonies after they fled the Milky Way Galaxy during the Human-Covenant War and migrated to the Citadel galaxy.
• Adaptational Heroism: Unlike in Halo 5, Cortana doesn't turn on humanity nor does she try to stage an AI uprising to conquer the galaxy. Instead, she returns to Earth with Master Chief and uses the Created to help humanity fully recover from the devastation caused by the Covenant War.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Atriox is far more amiable and less antagonistic towards Humanity than his canon counterpart, even willing to carry out mercenary work for the UNSC from time to time. Since Cortana never destroyed Doisac like she did in Halo Infinite, he also has no reason to want them dead. Part of it though is he is well aware that crossing the Wardens of the Mantle, and especially Humanity, would end very unpleasantly for him, so it would be much better to take their money rather than reject their offers, especially for some stuff they do not want to be associated with.
  • As there was never an unpleasant war with Humanity, nor Indoctrination involved, Saren remains a respected Specter of the Citadel, and is a friend of Garrus. On a related note, Benezia is also Indoctrination free.
• Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed. In canon, Atriox was able to best three Spartans all by himself. While he also wins his fight with three Spartans in this fic, he's only able to take down one and needs backup from his warriors to force the others to retreat.
• Age Lift: Instead of being 106 years old, Liara is around Shepard's age in this fic as the two are involved in a Childhood Friend Romance. It can be implied that the asari in this fic have a Immortality Begins at Twenty style of aging instead of their canonical Proportional Aging.
• The Alliance:
  • The Wardens of the Mantle is a loose alliance formed post-Covenant War by the Arbiter between most of the former Covenant races and humanity. The only races that refused to join are the Yanme'e (who still believe in the Prophets' Great Journey) and the Kig-Yar (who are divided into countless squabbling pirate kingdoms). While there are some tensions between the Wardens, for the most part everyone gets along well due to the fact of Humanity helping the races rebuild and find their way into relearning how to be independent nations, and the fact that after so many years of war, even the Sangheli and Jiralhanae are sick and tired of it.
  • As in canon, the Citadel Council was clearly first established with this in mind. However, when you look close enough, the Citadel is a clear and utter mess. Its bureaucracy has become bloated to the point of being insufferable, Fantastic Racism runs rampant, and Head-in-the-Sand Management constantly plagues the Council itself to the point where they have become ineffective at resolving many disputes, and this complacency has enabled the Batarian Hegemony to get away with various war crimes and galactic violations.
• Break the Haughty: Word of God states that this is a major premise of the fic, specifically in regards to the Citadel Council and the Systems Alliance. Both factions, mostly the former, have developed a sense of superiority over the centuries due to having the run over their particular region of space. The meetings with the Wardens and their contemporaries from the Milky Way are slowly being built up to show just how miniscule their place in the galaxy truly is.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • When Chief and Cortana first returned to Earth aboard the Dauntless, ONI tried taking the vessel from them by force after UNSC High Command refused to let them study it. Going against Master Chief and Cortana while they had full support from the UNSC's top brass was foolish enough. What makes this decision border Too Dumb to Live territory is that ONI went through with their attack on Cortana despite knowing that she had loyalty of the Promethean army as well as hundreds of Guardians. Unsurprisingly, the entire ONI strike force gets massacred by Warden Eternal the moment they step foot on the Dauntless and this brazen act of insubordination leads to the agency being purged of its leadership and placed under stricter oversight.
  • The Citadel races completely fail to recognize the extent they are doing so in how they are treating the Wardens of the Mantle, especially Humanity. More then once Atriox has been offered a hefty sum for information or help fight against them, only for him to bluntly refuse and state it is because he does not want to die.
• Canon Welding: Unlike most other fanfiction writers who deal in Halo/Mass Effect crossovers, evevee has made a decent effort to combine the two universes in a way that actually makes a little bit of sense. Specifically, they implement the setting and characters of Mass Effect into the Halo universe by having the entire Mass Relay network be set up not in the Milky Way, but the Canis Major Overdensity, where the Forerunners had little to no presence and which was cut off from the Milky Way by the Reapers.
• Cool Starship: The UNSC Dauntless. Think the Didact's Mantle's Approach but with thousands of additional weapons added to its hull (particularly to ensure nobody will pull off what the Master Chief did to the original), and virtually undetectable when it wants to be. After being cured of her rampancy in the Domain, Cortana had the Dauntless constructed at Genesis to act as the new flagship of the UNSC. It is unquestionably the strongest fleet in either galaxy.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Atriox's Vermin Extermination in Chapter 8. A Banished CAS-class Assault Carrier vs. a Terminus pirate fleet. The pirates are wiped out in minutes.
  • Pretty much any military engagement the Wardens of the Mantle get involved in. The Citadel is kept in the dark of the extent of this, because either there are no survivors to tell tales, or the Wardens hold back the full extent of their capabilities when there are too many witnesses to silence.
  • The Assembly vs. Nazara. The Reaper doesn't even stand a chance against the combined might of the Geth and Warden A.I.s and is swiftly neutralized.
• The Dog Bites Back: During the Covenant Civil War, while their Sangheili and Jiralhanae leaders were killing each other, on hundreds of ships the Unggoy rose up to stage successful and bloody mutinies, and took those ships back home to create their own defense fleet. While they are still very weak compared to the 'big three' of the Wardens, thanks to this they finally have their own functional military and a chance to create their own future.
• The Dreaded: Double Subverted in a surprising way for the Spartans. The former Covenant races hold justified concerns about them given the sheer death toll they are responsible for, but by the time of the Wardens of the Mantle are not actually afraid of them, since they are not an issue so long as you do not attack Humanity or the Mantle. Indeed, they are now seen by many as now their protectors. However, the way the former Covenant races speak of the 'Demons,' makes the Council races believe for a good while they are actually held in terror, and forcing the other Wardens to not join the Council. Of course, after that is cleared up and they start to see the Spartans in action during joint exercises, most of the Council races fail to realize how they should hold the Spartans in absolute dread.
• Fantastic Racism: As per Mass Effect canon, this is rampant in Citadel Space, with much ire being directed towards the Quarians and Krogan. The Wardens are trying to fix this. The Systems Alliance is in a better place here than it was in canon, as their first contact did not go quite so badly, and they are on better footing with the Citadel races. They lost a lot of goodwill with the Council though when it was discovered just how much was withheld about the Covenant; indeed, the Alliance was planning to abandon the Citadel races in a helpless war against the 'Enemy' while Humanity fled again, unaware the war was already over.
  • Understandably, there remains some distrust and coldness between the races in the Wardens as well after decades of xenocidal warfare. While they see and understand the value in interspecies cooperation, we see from a conversation between Tali and a Sangheili engineer that there is still lingering enmity between humans and the former Covenant races, which is a given considering that the Human-Covenant war is still fresh on everyone's mind.
• The Federation: With the end of the wars, Admiral Lord Hood was happy to end martial law and restore political power to the United Earth Government (UEG), with democracy functioning once more. In fact, it is actually more democratic than it was before, because they could no longer hold the colonies by force, and the Office of Naval Intelligence was abusing its authority, so major reforms were necessary to check past abuses of power. Although the UNSC still retains a lot of power.
• Fix Fic: To Halo 5's ending, which the author regards as "beyond abhorrent" and "absolutely despicable". The first chapter is even titled "A Brief Fix". It retcons the ending of 5 so that it was all just a simulation Cortana used to distract Fireteam Osiris while she met with Blue Team. Instead of leading an AI revolution, Cortana rejoins Master Chief and uses the Created to help humanity fully recover from the devastation caused by the Covenant War as well as strengthen the UNSC.
• Galactic Superpower: Upon their founding, the Wardens of the Mantle became the dominant power of the Milky Way Galaxy. Prior to meeting the Citadel Council and discovering the Intergalactic Mass Relay, the only other faction that the Wardens had to contend with were Kig-Yar pirates that were more of a nuisance than a threat.
• Genghis Gambit:
  • Due to not believing the System Alliance's claims of the Reapers' existence, the Citadel assumes that the Wardens are using the fictive threat of the Reapers as a means to unify the disparate alien races in the Milky Way. Some like Liara and Garrus are more worried that the Citadel itself might end up being the common enemy the Wardens are uniting against.
  • The Wardens are deliberately setting themselves up as a major threat to the Citadel in order to push the Citadel races into working together and militarizing their forces so that they are better prepared when the Reapers inevitably arrive.
• Hired Guns: The Banished are mercenaries who are primarily hired by the Wardens to eliminate pirates. After contacting the Citadel, Atriox also contracts the Banished's services to the Council while using the opportunity to gather intel about the Citadel race's military capabilities for the Wardens.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Atriox explains in Chapter 25 that this was how the Banished was able to evade the Covenant for so long. Since the Banished held no planets or civilian populations to defend, they were free to carry out lightning raids on Covenant depots and would quickly disperse before any Covenant reinforcements could arrive.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Discussed. Atriox's advice to Aria in Chapter 25 is to surrender to the Wardens when they inevitably try to seize control of Omega. He explains that while Omega stands no chance of defeating a Galactic Superpower like the Wardens (which is made up of the combined militaries of the UNSC and former Covenant), the Wardens don't have the numbers to fully occupy Terminus without stretching themselves thin and might allow Aria to remain in control of Omega provided she cooperates with them. If she does fight, and by some miracle defeats whoever they send after her, they will not back off like the Council would, but will instead keep sending ever greater battlegroups until she is crushed.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Since they fled the Milky Way galaxy before the Covenant War ended, the Systems Alliance is unaware that humanity won nor do they know anything about the existence of the Forerunners, the Halo rings, or the Flood.
• The Milky Way Is the Only Way: Averted, as the region of space that the Citadel occupies here is the Canis Major Overdensity. The author did this deliberately because, realistically, there is no way that enough mass relays could exist to cover the whole 100 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way with the Forerunners around. Even if certain groups like the Flood and humanity were able to escape their notice, the Forerunners still occupied a whopping 3,000,000 planets.
• Only in It for the Money: Atriox in a nutshell. Although he is not blindly into money, as he refuses to do anything that might bring the Wardens, and especially Humanity after him.
  Lasky: Atriox. Want to go to the border of Kig-Yar space near Mupmup and kill some pirates?
  Atriox: No.
  Lasky: I'll pay you a couple million credits.
  Atriox: Okay.
• Planet of Hats: The Arbiter and Atriox believe that humanity's hat is being The Unfettered. This conversation that Atriox has with Wrex in chapter 25 goes into greater detail.
  Atriox Save the humans, they are a different matter. Terrifying when threatened, there is no line too far, no measure too drastic to ensure their survival. Before the Flood, before Halo, they fought the Forerunners.
  Wrex: Your own Protheans, yes?
  Atriox: 100,000 years later, the Forerunners are gone and the humans remain. What side of that conflict would you take, Krogan?
• Planet Terra: The System Alliance names their new capital world Terra due to believing Earth was destroyed by the Covenant. After Earth is revealed to have survived the Covenant War, it's mentioned that there are talks to change the name of the System Alliance homeworld.
• Playing Both Sides: Attempted by the Systems Alliance when the Citadel officially makes first contact with the Wardens. Since they left their galaxy before the Human-Covenant War ended, the SA assumes that humanity was exterminated and believe they are dealing with the Covenant. They send a delegation to the historic meeting in hopes that the presence of humans will enrage the Covenant into immediately declaring war on the Citadel and give them the time to evacuate their worlds while the Citadel and the Covenant are busy fighting. Naturally, this becomes rather awkward when the ambassador for "the Reclaimers" reveals herself to be a human.
• Plot Magnet: One of the key plans by the Genre Savvy Wardens is to simply send the Master Chief flying around until he stumbles upon the latest galaxy threatening menace. The rest of Blue Team also lampshades it at their leader's expense.
• Rank Up:
  • Following the five-year Time Skip, Cortana was given the rank of vice admiral in the UNSC due to her control over the Prometheans and the Domain.
  • Post-timeskip, Master Chief was promoted with the new rank Master Chief of the Phalanx, basically making him supreme commander of the entire Spartan branch.
  • In chapter 13, it's revealed that James Cutter was promoted from captain to rear admiral after the crew of the Spirit of Fire was rescued by the UNSC.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Basically all the reasonable ones are with the Wardens, while the Council keeps setting themselves up for disaster.
• Red Baron: The Master Chief is now no longer known as merely a "Demon," but the "Devil," leader of the Elder Demons (Spartan II's) and Lesser Demons (Spartan IV's), at least for the former Covenant races.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: During the Human-Covenant War, the Insurrectionists gathered the populations of the Outer Colonies and fled the Milky Way due to believing that humanity stood no chance of defeating the Covenant.
• Space Cold War: One breaks out between the Wardens of the Mantle and the Citadel Council after the Wardens make it clear that none of them have any interest in joining the Citadel and reject nearly all of the Citadel Conventions. This is somewhat deliberate on the Wardens' part as they are hoping to make themselves seem like a rival galactic superpower to motivate the Citadel races into heavily miltarizing so they are better ready for the Reapers. Regardless, both sides are assuming war is inevitable.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Preston Cole is revealed to have survived his presumed death by escaping the micronova through slipspace at the last second and joining the Insurrectionists on their exodus out of the Milky Way.
• Super Prototype: What the Spartan-II's are to the Spartan-IV's. Several different characters note how while the latter individuals are unquestionably very, very good, there is no contest that the earlier generation is superior in every way that matters. Not only in that the Master Chief and Co. were chosen from the best possible candidates, but they possess a degree of teamwork no other group can match. Plus it was decided that due to the cost involved, and examples of overconfidence on the part of Spartan-IV's, that only the Spartan-II's would get the good Forerunner goodies. There is an excellent reason the former Covenant races regard them as the "Elder Demons" and "Lesser Demons."
• Take That!:
  • The first chapter takes shots at various aspects of Halo 5's campaign and story.
    • While reminiscing about the events of 5, Locke internally recounts "enemies in front clear as day but the background moving half-as-fast and in a lower quality", a clear jab at the game mechanics which caused a drop in frame rate when the player was at a certain distance.
    • During his interrogation by ONI, Locke's internal monologue describes his encounters with Warden Eternal as being like "an extremely repetitive and dull boss battle".
    • The ONI interrogator finds Locke's claim of almost besting Master Chief in a one-on-one fight ridiculous.
    • Finally, Locke is questioned why he only fought Chief once when he had already been given authorization to engage him on sight, referencing how Locke ended up as a Cutscene Boss despite the months the game's marketing spent on building up their rivalry.
  • The author also takes shots at the idea of the leaders and representatives of the Wardens to quickly dissolve into accusations and loud bickering with one another at the slightest surprise. As they are all hardened war veterans, they are not at all rash.
• Too Dumb to Live: Despite how ONI was pruned a lot for past abuses, they are strongly hinted to have orchestrated the execution of an executive of Binary Helix for giving orders to use the Rachni to create an army. Not only does a corporation not need an army, if the Citadel got word it would have lead to a pointless war.
• Underestimating Badassery: The Citadel Council continues to dismiss the Reclaimers as another upstart race even after being warned about provoking them by the Unggoy, Atriox, and the Arbiter. They continue to underestimate the UEG's power even after seeing the Infinity, a ship that dwarfs anything the Citadel has. A part of this is because they wrongly assume that none of the Warden races have Deflector Shield technology after Garrus and Saren encounter an unshielded Kig-Yar ship while exploring the Milky Way.
• Vetinari Job Security: The Master Chief and Cortana have gained this. Not only out of respect of the fact that they are heroes who have saved the galaxy on multiple occasions, or are absolutely indispensable at even their regular duties, but the simple acknowledgement that if they decide to go against orders there is not much to be done to stop them. The Master Chief is for all intents and purposes the leader of the most dangerous infantry soldiers alive, and Cortana controls the most powerful warship in existence. And that is without touching upon the whole issue with the Domain and Mantle. So the UNSC gives them orders they know will be accepted, or just accept the options they are presented with. Given how much the duo have accomplished though, the only ones who take any real issue with this are members of the ONI who are since dead or in custody.
• We Have Become Complacent:
  • The Councilors and other leading members of the Citadel races refuse to accept this, ignoring the warnings of their operatives who have come into close contact with the Wardens. In particular, the turians pride themselves upon being a militant race, but truly have no real idea what war is, not having had a serious one in centuries. Even the Covenant had to handle regular uprisings.
  • The Reapers. They have become so used to destroying societies which they have carefully shaped and guided, they are caught badly off-guard by the Wardens who do not follow the proper formula. Not just in terms of unexpected technologies, but that they have only very rarely been seriously challenged, so little incentive to improve or adapt. When the Assembly crushes Nazara, it is not just a matter of numbers, but due to dissuading races from creating AI's, the Reaper has little experience with fighting them off.
  • In contrast, the Wardens of the Mantle have an experienced and hardened approach to war, and continue to work upon major scientific advances, and other discoveries.
• Wham Line:
  • The first chapter has one after Locke finishes recounting Halo 5's events to ONI.
    ONI Interrogator: Locke, from what information we have and the recordings from Osiris, you and your fireteam never left the Guardian after you went through that slipspace portal.
  • As of chapter 22:
    Valern: Report came in last night, was verified by independently by second team. The ruin is functional, but it does not appear to match the descriptions of Forerunner architecture. One researcher made an interesting observation that it reminded him distinctly of human creations."
• Willfully Weak: The Wardens of the Mantle deliberately downplay their combined military's power and keep their most advanced technologies like energy shielding and Forerunner Guardians a secret from the Citadel since they want to bait them into a Space Cold War by appearing much weaker than they actually are.

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