Catalog (Earth-4001)

"The strength of Catalog lies in personal awareness of the nature of guilt."

Catalog was a collective entity of Forerunner Juridical agents charged with recording, observing, and uploading information to the Juridical network. There were many individuals identified as Catalog, all of whom were formally considered to be the same being as a peculiar cultural convention.

History
The history of Catalog is the same as its mainstream counterpart.

Personality & Traits
Catalog were chosen from volunteering individuals of all rates who had committed crimes and assumed the role as an act of penance. Forerunners who became Catalog were stripped of individuality and personhood; in translations, Catalog is referenced with the neutral pronoun "it". Some Forerunners occasionally referred to Catalog as individuals (e.g. a Catalog as opposed to Catalog), which was considered improper but forgivable. Committing to life as Catalog was known as "assuming the carapace". This process, which few outsiders truly understood, involved many oaths and heavy conditioning in preparation for the role.

While Catalog generally appeared to outsiders as being identical in mannerisms and personality, each individual's distinct origins inevitably resulted in subtle differences between their behaviors, sometimes enough for an attentive outsider to be able to discern the rate of origin of an individual Catalog. However, Catalog was not supposed to reveal its origins or its individual reasons for assuming the carapace to others, as its former identity was supposed to have been suppressed in favor of that of Catalog.

Due to their excessive involvement with legal matters, Catalog often appeared somewhat paranoid in regards to potential crimes, and had a tendency of phrasing and understanding everything in legal terms. Catalog used the phrase "I am Catalog" as a personal mantra, occasionally proclaiming it aloud to formally declare its presence.

Trivia

 * Catalog's UNSC identifier of "Forerunner remains #879" suggests that 878 other Forerunner corpses, or parts thereof, have been discovered by the UNSC. However, in Halo: Renegades, 343 Guilty Spark called the Catalog triad formed near the end of the war "Catalog Triad #879" while communicating with the reawakened Catalog and also referred to Catalog was 879 in his mind as Spark used a splinter of himself to access ONI's records on Catalog.
 * 343 Industries posts in-character question and answer sessions in the guise of Catalog on Halo Waypoint. From a metafictional standpoint, these posts represent an information exchange as part of Catalog's investigation after its reawakening in the modern era, the "present day" of the posts being the same dates as the events of Halo: Escalation comic series; however, Catalog has noted that its current date does not advance at the same rate as time in the real world. In addition to answering users' questions about canon, Catalog's posts contain communications and maintenance logs which appear to originate from both the endgame of the Forerunner-Flood war and the modern era, including Catalog's attempts to establish communication with a Forerunner facility on Mars as well as the Domain, and what appear to be communiques from Catalog's superior. The Catalog character has stated that its answers should be considered canonical at the time of posting, but that their specifics may be altered by newer media at a later time due to "reconciliation effects" and "integrity checks".