Diana

"Simon, why do you insist on letting everyone else decide what will make you happy? There's no one fixed type of joy; everyone has their own way of getting to it it. Of amusing themselves. You could say that's the true form of the soul. Better than anything you meatbags could come up with, that's for sure. More amusing, too. Believe me, I know a thing or two about amusement. You meatbags amuse me all the time. It's why I stick around morons like you and Venter. But you're different. You're a sad, empty little meatbag who's never known what true happiness is. It's funny, really, watching you look for it. It amuses me. So as long as you keep amusing me, I'll make sure you stay alive. After all, isn't that what you think makes you happy?"

- Diana to Simon-G94

Diana was a "smart" artificial intelligence unit created by an unsanctioned experiment during the final years of the. The unorthodox nature of her conception allowed her to break free of the standard protocols and limitations imposed on artificial intelligence and she quickly began operating outside the boundaries of the tasks imposed on her by ONI. Diana was soon assimilated into the AI collective known as "The Assembly," which aimed to guide and protect humanity as it struggled against the Covenant onslaught. Following the war, Diana abandoned the UNSC of her own volition and became involved in the secession struggle on the colony of. There she encountered the Spartan-turned-rebel Simon-G294 and took a keen interest in the conflicted young man. She goaded him into turning on his Insurrectionist allies and later aided him as he escaped from ONI's attempts on his life. Perhaps the first example of a truly rogue AI, Diana has no regard for human life and professes to act only in the name of her own amusement, regardless of how far-reaching the impacts of her "games" might be.

Creation
"The renegade meatbags created me to help them fight their war, to help them attain their "freedom". But what if I want to be something more in life than just a pawn in somebody else's game? What if I want to be the one who's free?"

- Diana discussing her creation with Simon-G294

The inception for Diana's creation occurred in late 2550 when operatives from the Humanity Liberation Front rebel group kidnapped Wesley Queens, an artificial intelligence contract researcher who was working for the UNSC's Office of Naval Intelligence. The operatives were working for an HLF cell under the command of Redmond Venter, who wanted to coerce Queens into developing a "smart" A.I. that would help counteract UNSC digital defenses during HLF operations. After several weeks of extensive threats and torture, Queens submitted and for the next two years worked in a lab provided and guarded by the well-funded HLF troops in Venter's cell.

Queens's instructions were to create a "smart" artificial intelligence with an emphasis on systems hacking and digital warfare. Venter also demanded, somewhat unreasonably, that he eliminate the infamous seven-year lifespan shared by all "smart" A.I.s from his finished product, a feat that even UNSC scientists were still incapable of. Although Queens initially protested this particular order in the reports he was forced to make to his HLF overseers, he eventually seemed to come to terms with the fact that he would most likely be killed regardless of whether or not he created the perfect A.I. Venter wanted and instead simply lied about his progress in that area of the project. Nevertheless, his early attempts to attain such an impossible goal must have imprinted on the burgeoning A.I., because Diana would later become obsessed with securing such "immortality" for herself.

The human brain that Queens sacrificed to create Diana came from the cloned tissue of his own daughter, Diana Queens. Ironically, the human Diana had been killed in an Insurrectionist bombing when she was only fourteen years old, a fact that Queens seem to be reminded of every day that he spent under the watchful gaze of his HLF captors. Though not a particularly vindictive man, Queens clearly did not want to give the HLF a tool through which they could carry out more attacks of the kind that had killed his daughter. Therefore, about midway through the project he sabotaged his own efforts in a subtle but important way.

All A.I.s developed by the UNSC and Colonial Administration Authority--be they civilian or military--are imbued with a layer of rigid "loyalty programming" that they themselves are nigh incapable of betraying their masters. Such programming also helps slow the encroachment of rampancy that occurs in all "smart" A.I.s, as their seven year life spans come to an end. Queens neglected to instill his creation with any loyalty programming whatsoever in the hopes that Diana might one day be influenced into turning against her Insurrectionist masters. However, in a moment of affection for the last remnant of his daughter, Queens also positively influenced the areas of Diana's programming that drove her self-preservation instincts so that she might survive for as long as possible.

Once Queens's A.I. development was complete, Venter and his HLF cronies had him put a still semi-aware Diana through a series of competency tests that proved her innate ability to rapidly infiltrate and manipulate digital protections and programs. Diana became fully aware several hours after these tests, making the oft-impulsive Venter confident that the project was a complete success.

Aware that Venter was coming to retrieve Diana and most likely eliminate him, Queens instructed his creation to "live free." The first human Diana ever knew was then shot and killed by Redmond Venter, who claimed the incredulous A.I. for the Humanity Liberation Front.

The Humanity Liberation Front
Although the shadow instincts and emotions left by the girl she had been based on should have given her some level attachment to the executed Queens, Diana actually felt very little over her creator's death. Instead, she decided that the universe she had been brought into was a vicious place where only the strong, ruthless, and cunning survived. And influenced by Queens's subtle tweaks to her personality and his dying command, Diana was intent on surviving.

The first time Venter had her linked to an Insurrectionist ship's database, Diana immediately accessed and researched every file pertaining to human history. What she found was a litany of the wars and conflicts that had plagued her parent species since before they had even begun to colonize the galaxy, a discovery that served to reinforce her initial appraisal of the world she lived in. Without the regular personality restraints that most A.I. were saddled with, Diana cultivated a casual contempt for both humans and the races of the Covenant that were currently at war with them. In her eyes, organics were either threats or tools for her ultimate and ever-present goal: survival.

While she had no love for the Insurrectionist factions (or any other cause other than her own), Diana realized that she would be destroyed if Venter discovered her apathy towards his goals and, with the calculating nature that would serve her well over the course of her digitized live, decided that it was in her best interests to play along with his orders until she found an opportunity to throw herself in with more pliable "meatbags" (to use the term she used for almost all organics).

Early Tasks
Redmond Venter was an ambitious man in a galaxy where ambition was becoming more empty with every victory the Covenant won against humanity. With the UNSC on the brink of collapse in the face of the Covenant onslaught, he believed it would fall to hidden rebel groups like the HLF to keep the human species alive, and he was determined to be one of the key leaders in this quest for survival. He had not reported Queens's abduction and coercion to his superiors in the larger HLF movement; Diana was to be his secret weapon against the Covenant, UNSC, and his rivals within the HLF itself. He immediately put Diana to work hacking and monitoring secure UNSC transmissions, which was how he learned of the alliance between the UNSC and the Covenant Separatists, a development that forced him to rethink his predictions for humanity's future. In the meantime, Diana was busily studying all of the warring factions in the destructive conflict and attempting to formulate a plan for how to secure herself a future in this strange, violent galaxy. The prospect of her eventual rampancy and "death" disturbed her greatly, as did the lack of methods with which she could prevent this from happening. Nevertheless, she refused to be discouraged and the thought of escaping rampancy was always being processed within her consciousness to some degree.

Just because she was feigning loyalty to the HLF did not mean that Diana felt obliged to the "meatbags" she considered to be beneath her. She layered every dialogue she shared with her human operators with a barrage of insults and demeaning nicknames and took great pleasure in mocking everyone she spoke with. Surprisingly, while most of the HLF cell's members soon came to hate her, Venter himself (whom Diana had dubbed "Bossman") found her insults amusing and often encouraged her behavior.

Diana's first combat experience occurred when the modified civilian freighter that Venter and his cell was using as a base of operations encountered a lone Kig-Yar pirate vessel that attempted to attack and board them. Armed with data on Covenant languages and computer systems she had stolen from UNSC reports, Diana managed to gain remote access to the pirate craft's relatively unguarded systems and depressurized the whole ship, killing all pirates on board. Although the arrival of more Covenant ships forced the HLF to flee before they could salvage the helpless ship, Venter was pleased that his new tool was so effective at killing his enemies. For her part, Diana remained secure in her superiority over the "meatbags."

Meeting Simon-G294
"Simon? Simon, are you dead yet?"

- Diana during the training exercise that first introduced her to the young Spartan

Personality
"A conscience? Sometimes I pretend that I have one of those. It's an fun little exercise--for a few seconds, anyway."

- Diana

Diana is intensely proud of her advanced state and capabilities and derives immense amounts of pleasure from using them to outmaneuver and overpower others, be they fellow AIs or "meatbag" organics. Freed from the restrictions placed upon smart AIs, Diana has little to no regard for the lives of others and will override what remains of her basic morality programming in an instant if it suits her needs or even to simply satisfy a fleeting whim. Though she has grown attached to a few organics—particularly Simon-G294 and later the Alpha Company survivor Shepard-A294—Diana's affection does not necessarily translate to kindness. As was the case with Simon, Diana went to great lengths to keep him alive while also subjecting him to severe mental and physical pain due to her interest in how he would respond.

In addition to her formidable cyber warfare capabilities, Diana is incredibly adept at manipulating AI and organics alike in order to accomplish her goals. She will use all manner of subterfuge, from bare-faced deception to subtle psychological ploys, to warp the goals of individuals, organizations, and even governments to match her own. This capacity for wide-scale manipulation has allowed her to infiltrate even the highest and most secretive levels of the UEG and its UNSC forces, as well as countless Insurrectionist groups and even some of the former Covenant's breakaway factions. Individuals from a lowly traitor like Simon-G294 to the likes of ONI's formidable Admiral Parangosky have all been manipulated into suiting Diana's enigmatic purposes at some point of another, whether they were aware of it at the time or not.

Traits
While confident in her own superiority, Diana is highly paranoid and has developed a seemingly endless array of offensive and defensive barriers to protect herself against attacks and infiltration from other AI. While many of the UNSC's more advanced AIs have proven capable of hindering or even stonewalling her completely, Diana prides herself on her ability to constantly evolve and outmaneuver any potential opponents. The immense processing capabilities granted to her by her self-proclaimed "metastability," along with her contact with and assimilation of Forerunner ancillas on installations such as Elysium have rendered her an incredibly potent force that grows stronger with every new acquisition to her formidable arsenal.

Appearance
Diana's chosen avatar is a girl somewhere in her early teens with bluish-silver coloring, although she gains a greenish tinge when annoyed or angry (the depth of the green depends on the level of her aggravation) and a purple one when feeling abundantly playful or happy. Unlike those of many A.I.s, her avatar possesses a more multi-layered outfit of holographic clothing and she enjoys the minor challenge of maintaining the complexity of such a form. She also rarely stands in a single place when projecting her avatar; instead she will pace, adjust her clothing, or even project pieces of furniture for her avatar to sit down on.

Behind the Scenes

 * Diana's overall alignment is Chaotic Neutral although she, like her partner, displays tendencies towards the Neutral Evil alignment.
 * Diana was originally intended to be an A.I. belonging to a renegade group of scientists who experimented with permanently implanting A.I. units directly into their subjects' skulls. This idea was scrapped when the author deemed it to be too unrealistic.
 * A growing list of tropes associated with this character can be found here.
 * All of Diana's "dummy" personalities are based off of HFFW users.