Well this certainly was an awesome read! If you don't mind, a thought came to mind about the third A.I. You mentioned the sword was berried in a grave after a great war. What if this war was the war of the forrunners and the flood. It was 300 yrs long and the forrunners did make quite a few super advanced A.I. SPOILERS : At the end of Halo 3 (LEGENDARY DIFFICULTY), master cheif, cyro-frozen and in half of forward onto dawn, was seen crashing on to a supposed forrunner planet (due to the designs on it). SPOILERS : Also it is to be mentioned that just as Jorge was taken away in slip stream somewhere in space, there was another spartan that could have suffered the same fate and we just did not know it. The spartan Sam mentioned in the fall of reach dying tragically in a covenant ship exploding from the inside due to spartan placed bombs. This actually sounds pretty random but what if, and I'm only saying if, the slip stream was activated as an attempt for the ship to escape. Maybe somehow the direct exposure to the force of the bombs and the slip stream sent him into slipstream at a random direction, say toward a certain possible forrunner planet with a possible third A.I. that kept him alive and helped him. Sam was one of Cheif's best friend's growing up in the spartan 2 program (parallel). This is only speculation. :) please tell me what you think