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- "I joined this war to avoid spilling rivers of blood. Fight for humanity's survival, no meaningless bloodshed, minimize sacrifices, one person taking up the mission of fate instead of armies of men - that is what we Spartans should do."
- ―Wynne-G327
Wynne-G327 is an officer in Section One of the Office of Naval Intelligence. A former child soldier of the controversial SPARTAN-III Program, she spent a mere few months as a commando before accepting a noncombatant role. By the time she reached sixteen years of age, however, she had become a field agent specializing in undercover operations due to her information-collecting skills coupled with her diminutive and disarmingly youthful appearance. Stoic and firmly attached to her belief that "to whom much is given, much is required," she feels obligated to serve as a protector of humanity yet is more comfortable working as a spy than fighting as part of the Spartan branch. Known to most as Codename: SABER, she eschews the use of her legal surname in favor of continuing to utilize her Spartan tag in official documentation.
Introduction
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Personal History
Early Life
Origins
- "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. Can you tell me where that's from?"
- ―Oswin Baines
- "The twelfth chapter of the gospel of Luke, verse number forty-eight, King James Version."
- ―Winnie
- "Fantastic. Absolutely stellar. Always remember that, Winnie dearest."
- ―Oswin Baines
In the year 2534, a well-to-do couple residing in the city of Cape Breton on the colony Alluvion elected to utilize in-vitro fertilization in order to conceive a child, which they had been unable to do despite years of trying other methods. Timothy Pendergast and his wife Beatrix Chevalier donated eggs and sperm for the creation of several embryos, the healthiest of which would be implanted into Beatrix in order to circumvent the natural causes of her infertility. After Beatrix successfully became pregnant, the remaining embryos were cryonically preserved and stored at the fertility clinic for future adoption. One of them was thawed in late 2536 and transferred to another infertile couple, Oswin and Justine Baines, who believed they were receiving a male embryo due to an error in the clinic's records. When ultrasound observation revealed otherwise they were troubled but resolved to love their child anyway, and by mid-July of the following year they welcomed a baby girl into their household. As her father, Oswin Milton Baines III, had intended to make her the fourth in the line of Baines men, she was named Oswynne.
A literary professor at Cape Breton University, Oswin was a brilliant but troubled man who began to subject his daughter to unrealistic expectations early on. Though Justine was able to curb his enthusiasm somewhat, he was convinced that Oswynne might possess some gift or talent to compensate for not being the son he had yearned for. To his delight she began to manifest as precociously intelligent and performed milestones such as talking and walking much sooner than expected. His response was to inundate her in special development programs and repeatedly test her for signs of gifted ability, and by the time she was three she had already learned how to read and write legibly. While Oswin beamed over such advancement, Justine recognized that Oswynne was not allowed to simply be a child - in fact, she comported herself much more seriously than a child should, to the point where her behavior was almost grave and somber. "Winnie," as she was affectionately known, had already absorbed the notion that she was expected to follow a set path and achieve goals not her own. Oswin constantly assured her that she was different from others, that she was special, and that in being special she had a duty to accomplish feats others could not. Her daily schedule was usually a tight regimen of music lessons, schooling, and even martial arts followed by studying in the family library. Though Justine tried to placate Winnie with dolls and toys, the girl remained steadfastly dedicated to her father's vision and instead favored practicing on the piano or kendo drilling with her shinai.
Though her mother attempted to let Wynne act her age by taking her to playgrounds, Wynne would treat the playsets like obstacle courses and became confused when urged to play with other children.
At the age of five, Winnie had already advanced through third-grade level academics and learned a second language, Oswin's native Welsh. She often appeared quiet and contemplative, surprising adults with instances of curt speech and bewildering them with her reserved and aloof demeanor. Justine had given up on normalizing her daughter at this point, considering it a hopeless venture in the face of Oswin's ambition. Their marriage suffered as a result and Justine became withdrawn from both husband and child. Winnie soldiered through this turbulence seemingly unaffected, as her father had been the defining presence in her life since she could remember, but fell to conversing with her dolls and playing pretend in private to cope with the feeling that her mother could no longer stand to look at her. Oswin continued to push Winnie forward in spite of all the friction his domineering caused, hoping to get her into university by the time she hit her teens, and her path of prodigious excellence seemed set in stone.
The Fall of Alluvion
In late 2542 the Covenant attacked Alluvion, beginning a campaign which would culminate with the planet's glassing in January 2543. Winnie was asleep in bed when the emergency sirens began to wail at the onset of the invasion and woke up just in time to look out her bedroom window; the silhouettes of descending Covenant ships reminded her of whales. Oswin immediately rallied the family for evacuation, throwing their most necessary belongings into luggage before fleeing the house. As he drove Justine and Winnie to Cape Breton's starport, Covenant fighters began strafing the highway and a Banshee fired its fuel rod cannon near the Baines' vehicle, sending it out of control and into a violent flip. Winnie was trapped in her car seat, upside down, stuck with the battered body of her mother suspended next to her. Oswin had been crushed to death when the car landed on its front, while Justine's neck snapped from the impact. Other vehicles careened and wrecked under the aerial onslaught and Winnie simply waited to die in all the chaos, unable to escape.
She was recovered from the wreck by a teenaged boy who had survived the crash of his own vehicle and they made their way down the highway by using other wrecked cars as cover while Covenant aircraft continued to pass overhead. The boy, whose name she never learned, was mistaken for a looter and shot when they tried to hide in a residence nearby. The shooter was horrified and fled upon seeing Winnie, who remained inside the empty home with the shooter's cat for company until a squad of UNSC Marines discovered her four days later. Cape Breton was now crawling with Covenant troops and Winnie witnessed several firefights as her rescuers attempted to move her and several other civilians through the city-turned-war zone. The sight of so many bodies, most of which had been out in the open for days, sickened her to the point where she could not proceed without being carried. One of the civilians, a factory worker named Tillman, tried convincing the others to leave her behind since she slowed the group down; an argument erupted and attracted the attention of nearby Kig-Yar infantry, and Tillman was killed in the ensuing combat along with two of the other civilians and one Marine.
By the time they reached the starport it had fallen under heavy attack as Covenant forces sought to stop evacuation efforts. Though the UNSC succeeded in destroying the Corvette that had been shooting down departing ships, a formidable ground force moved in and began slaughtering any humans in its way. The efforts of military personnel to direct the refugees to shuttles disintegrated as mass panic took hold and the boarding process became a free-for-all. Desperation began driving those waiting to evacuate into a frenzied madness and Winnie watched as people were trampled by their fellows in the chaos; fighting broke out among the evacuees as large families refused to part with elderly or crippled members to make space for others. One of her Marine escorts, Sergeant Tilda Harmon, managed to force her way through the crowd with Winnie in tow and was in the middle of pointing out which shuttle to board when a Covenant sniper shot her through the head. Winnie ran to the nearest shuttle and barely made it through the door before the pilot initiated launch protocols and sealed it. She watched as the Covenant overran the starport until the shuttle flew too high for her to see, her mind replaying the sight of alien footsoldiers massacring refugees until she finally passed out from combined lack of sleep and stress.
The Volunteer
When the evacuation shuttle arrived at the colony of Circumstance after a tedious journey through multiple Slipspace jumps as per the Cole Protocol, Winnie was quickly transferred to an orphanage in Mira along with many other displaced children. Her solemn demeanor bewildered her caretakers, who were accustomed to the half-crazed behavior of the other Alluvion orphans and did not know what to make of her uncanny stoicism. She was evaluated for mental issues and her prodigious nature surfaced during these sessions, which coupled with her genetic makeup attracted the attention of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Agents of the ONI began to visit Winnie under the guise of determining her potential as a student for a special school, conducting written tests as well as physical examinations. Quite used to being tested and observed all her life, she assumed that they were like her father and wanted to send her to a school for the gifted. One day, however, the testing stopped and they asked if she wanted to get revenge for the deaths of her parents. Rather than comment on the strangeness of the question or balk at it, Winnie answered with a query of her own: how?
The simplified explanation of the SPARTAN-III Program the agents provided her seemed a dazzling opportunity to truly fulfill the sense of duty her late father had instilled in her. Believing she had been spared by fate in order to fulfill a greater purpose, she drank in the concepts of self-sacrifice and honor; every word uttered by the agents about Spartans being protectors of humankind stuck in the forefront of her mind as she remembered the destruction and death on Alluvion. In her mind's eye she imagined herself as King Arthur, her favorite hero from the stories her father used to tell, reaching to pull the sword from the stone and defend Britain. There was no alternative to answering "yes" in her mind as surely as there had been no alternative for Arthur. Heroes simply had to do what no one else could.
SPARTAN-III
Candidate G327
Wynne-G327 firing a cut-down MA5K carbine during weapons training.
Fireteam Rondel
Incident with Fireteam Stiletto
Graduation
On the Battlefield
The Insurrection
The Covenant
Wynne-G327, clad in SPI Mark III armor, engages Covenant ground troops.
A Crossroads
Codename: SABER
Dossier
Physical Description
Wynne is Caucasian with fair skin, blonde hair and green eyes. Her petite build coupled with her youthful facial proportions masks the fact that she is capable of superhuman feats of strength, though her well-muscled build is usually hidden under a uniform or disguise. Though she was subjected to induced puberty before even hitting her teen years, her appearance lacks obvious feminine maturity and she can easily pass as a prepubescent male. In keeping with her role as an undercover agent she has undergone numerous corrective surgeries to remove scars from past battles. She considers herself to be a "handsome woman" and though she is a skilled makeup artist from her time as a spy, she refuses to wear cosmetics when not in the field. Compared to other Spartans, even fellow Gamma Company SPARTAN-IIIs, she appears diminutive and childlike. She is more athletically slender than rippling with muscle and possesses a balletic grace in hand-to-hand combat. She is fully aware that her looks cause people to underestimate her and uses that to her advantage, though she dislikes being patronized over her size.
Personality
- "If I protect humanity as a Spartan, I cannot ask to live as a person."
- ―Wynne-G327
Wynne is a gifted actress capable of inventing and embodying a wide range of personas to suit the needs of any particular undercover mission. Despite her ability to project a charismatic and silver-tongued front, at her core she is an unhealthily selfless individual whose perceives herself as a tool instead of a human being. Subjected to over half a decade of military indoctrination in preparation for her intended role as a suicide soldier, she adopted the SPARTAN-III Program's ethos which dictated that she must devote every aspect of herself to the preservation of humankind through service to the UNSC. She considered her own body to be property of the UNSC, believed she was obligated to make a good return on the investment her training and augmentations represent, and denied that she qualified as fundamentally human. According to her reasoning, a Spartan cannot afford to be hampered by "human" emotions and must distance themselves from the very thing they strive to protect in order to do what must be done. This attitude was what influenced her to choose working as a covert operative instead of folding into the SPARTAN-IV Program, as she considered the Fours to be subpar since they were not raised as Spartans and lacked proper motivation according to her standards.
Years of living among colonial insurgents served to chip away at her emotional armor, however, and she gradually came to understand that the nature of her supposedly sacred charge as a protector of humanity was anything but purely righteous. Though her functionality as an operative was not compromised by this realization, it prompted a questioning of beliefs which culminated in despair after she was captured and tortured at the hands of rebels under the leadership of her former comrade Galen-G322. Following her rescue by another Gamma Spartan, the mercenary Simon-G294, she attempted to rally her selfless ideals only to have them viciously derided by Simon. They parted bitterly and his words stayed with her, combining with the torture she had experienced and producing a somber change of heart. She suffered a breakdown from which she emerged stripped of her illusions about Spartanhood and despondent over her seemingly unchangeable fate - to serve and fight until she was given the opportunity to die in the most beneficial manner possible to the rest of the UNSC. For the first time in her life, she wished that she had never become a Spartan.
Wynne would ultimately reconcile with her fate thanks to the influence of several key individuals whom she came to regard as dear friends. She is ever taciturn and characteristically Spartan in her way of living but has accepted her role in a practical manner, leaving her lofty ideals behind. She has a very dry sense of humor and can be unexpectedly witty when given the chance.
Relationships
Wynne is not known for her ability to make friends easily and often chooses to abstain from socializing, but nonetheless has a number of people in her life whom she cares for. Most of these people are fellow SPARTAN-IIIs, though she has comrades within the Office of Naval Intelligence and even a few civilian acquaintances. She was especially close to Elena-G124 during their time on Onyx and she would later refer to Elena as her sister. Upon learning that her genetic sibling, Cecil Pendergast, had survived the destruction of Alluvion and was now a doctor residing on Earth, she reached out to him and eventually became part of his family.
Trivia
- Inspirations for the character Wynne include Arturia Pendragon of the Fate game/visual novel/anime series and Paz Ortega Andrade of the Metal Gear series.