oct 20, 2525 - The Human-Covenant War Begins

Description:

The Prophets declared Humanity to be an affront to their gods (later propaganda would declare humans had inhabited and "defiled" Forerunner artifacts and worlds), and called for a crusade against the Human species. The Covenant's final objective was nothing less than total genocide.

The first battle of the war was the extended, albeit one-sided, ground battle which took place on Harvest. The UNSC managed to delay the Covenant long enough to evacuate many of Harvest's civilians. Eventually, the Covenant used their capital ships to glass the planet's surface.

The Covenant continued to attack and destroy Humans wherever they were found, using their Luminaries to find Human worlds. Though the UNSC forces fought bravely, inferior technology made any victory difficult - dependent on strategic and numerical superiority, often with the aid of Spartans. Human armor, missiles, magnetic accelerator cannons, and crude slipspace technology were asymmetrically matched with Covenant energy shields, plasma torpedoes, energy projectors, and pinpoint slipspace jumps. The Covenant, fighting a war of extermination, did not need to commit to full ground invasions except in special circumstances. Covenant ships needed only to destroy human space-borne defenses, then reduce the planet's surface to glass with orbital plasma bombardments. Covenant troops were used to soften up UNSC ground forces, or hunt for holy relics. Over twenty-seven years, the Covenant whittled UNSC forces away through firepower and attrition.

Added to timeline:

Date: