Biological Warfare Division

The Biological Warfare Division is a clandestine agency operating under the Office of Naval Intelligence that oversees matters regarding the usage of biological and chemical items such as viruses, poisons and gasses which have an inherent usefulness in situations pertaining to warfare, combat and espionage.
Due to the legality and ethicacy of many of it's projects, the BWD operates under a veil of complete secrecy and as such has no official logo or associated emblems and symbols. While most members of the Office of Naval Intelligence and a handful of higher-ranking United Nations Space Command officials know of the existence of the BWD, very few know of it's various projects and crimes against humanity.
== Role ==
The officially stated role of the Biological Warfare Division, as known to outsiders of the division and those without the proper clearance, is to provide a safeguard for humanity against threats of a biological nature. Unofficially, the Biological Warfare Division not only produces weapons and utilities of a biological and chemical nature, but actively works to develop these tools into being efficient and effective in a military context. For most of it's existence, it's single target was the Covenant - however with the end of the Human-Covenant War, the Biological Warfare Division's attention has been split between the Insurrection and the Covenant Remnants.
== History ==
=== Creation ===
While the Office of Naval Intelligence and by extension the United Nations Space Command already had several dedicated organisations under their control for the development of biological and chemical products, however these organisations were bound by the strict laws surrounding both the ethicacy and the usage of the outcomes of their projects; making them undesirable for the development of biological weapons. As such, the top brass of the Office of Naval Intelligence saw fit to establish a highly secretive development committee for this purpose; along with the added goal of researches into non-lethal projects, such as serums to improve the endurance, mobility and strength of individuals.
Shortly following the establishment of the BWD, top minds in the fields of biological, medical and chemical research were contracted to join the organisation. Initially, ONI struggled to locate enough Epidemiologists who were willing to become a part of the BWD, however eventually they fulfilled their minimum personnel requirements and the division officially began to operate.
=== Failure of Project CHRYSAOR ===
The first major project the Biological Warfare division was tasked with working on was Project CHRYSAOR. In short, the project was intended to create a specialised gas which would operate in a similar capacity to Cupid's Knife, bringing great suffering to those who intended to do harm to specific personnel, thereby rendering the infected individual incapable of carrying out their attack due to the extreme pain. Project CHRYSAOR saw very little initial success as the task of creating an artificial parasite was harder than they had initially expected, and a large amount of money was drained by the project only for it to gain very little ground in terms of development. 
Just as Project CHRYSAOR was on the cusp of a major breakthrough, the Office of Naval Intelligence scrapped CHRYSAOR due to the onset of the Human-Covenant War and the project was deemed too costly for too little gain. Many of the BWD's Parasitologists were unsatisfied with this cancellation, but reluctantly carried out the destruction of material related to the project. CHRYSAOR stained the division's reputation in the eyes of ONI's top brass for many years to come as it became a common assumption that the BWD was nothing more than a money drain, however those who remained faithful to the division and believed it would eventually break even prevented it from being defunded or dissolved.
A rogue member of the Biological Warfare Division, Parasitologist Dr. Jean-Charles Barbier, infected the agent Roger Norman with an incomplete version of the CHRYSAOR parasite that he had continued working on in secret, preventing his own assassination but accidentally killing the agent. The following scandal almost resulted in the Biological Warfare Division being dissolved, however the BWD survived the ordeal and continued to develop various projects.
=== Human-Covenant War ===
==== The Barbier Affair ====
Jean-Charles Barbier had been successfully evading assassins and agents deployed by the Office of Naval Intelligence for many years following his defection from the Biological Warfare Division, and by 2534 was considered one of the largest internal security threats to ONI due to the sensitive material and information he possessed. However, despite their numerous failures in the past, ONI had gained several new leads to the current whereabouts of Dr. Barbier and handed the task of his silencing, whether by capture or death, to the BWD as he was ultimately the division's responsibility. In February of 2535, he had been identified by an ONI informant on the planet of Society and was being actively monitored by local personnel. Dr. Barbier was promptly assassinated by handpicked BWD agents however the stain his defection left on the BWD would remain apparent over the decade to come.
==== Project TALARIA ====
Project TALARIA was the division's second major project. The intent of the project was to develop a specialised virus that would make the victim severely afraid of heights. While the project seemed harmless on paper, for the Covenant TALARIA would have been a major threat as the aerial insertion of their forces would have been severely hampered by TALARIA's effects. As intended, initial tests on unwilling human subjects displayed that the patient would become inconsolable once high in the air or aboard anything associated to extreme heights, such as aircraft or in an elevator. With promising results in the initial stages of development and testing, funding for TALARIA was increased and by 2542 the first completed version of the TALARIA serum began to enter the testing phase. 
A number of unprecedented setbacks in Project TALARIA, including the fact that the first completed version of the serum had negligible effects on Sangheili and Jiralhanae who could quickly rally their afraid troops once on the ground, caused the project's completion to be delayed by six years. After going through countless re-development cycles, modifications and controlled-environment tests, a truly-completed version of TALARIA was made available for testing in December of 2548. Rose-788 was selected to test the serum on a number of Covenant forces currently engaged in the Battle of Natal, and after successfully infiltrating the vessel Unflinching Piety and administering TALARIA to the vessel's sanitation the battle quickly turned decisively into the UNSC's favour as the Covenant were unable to deploy reinforcements effectively due to their reinforcements being inconsolable and terrified upon reaching the ground. With the majority of the Covenant's reinforcements incapable of engaging the UNSC's ground forces effectively, they were wiped out and the Covenant withdrew from the planet; proving Project TALARIA to be a major success. 
Despite Project TALARIA's success, it was soon cancelled after it was considered inefficient; the only effective way of administering the serum was to infect the sanitation or food supply of a vessel, which was almost impossible. In addition, a far more interesting and lethal proposal had gained the favour of most of the BWD's divisional heads and soon replaced TALARIA.
==== Project SUNZI ====
Project SUNZI, often regarded as the Biological Warfare Division's crowning achievement, was destined to be the project that turned the BWD's reputation from that of a waste of money to that of fear and respect. Intended to create a superlethal virus with the ability to either significantly harm or completely destroy the Covenant war effort, the project was to be far larger and far more fruitful than both TALARIA and CHRYSAOR combined. Initially the project centered around artificially modifying the extinct-in-the-wild Ebola virus, however soon it grew to include Rabies and African trypanosomiasis. The results were extremely promising - and extremely frightening. After numerous setbacks and issues with the development of certain strains such as Trypanosomiasis II, the twin strains RESHEF and EBV-Lyssavirus ended their development cycle. Both were incredibly lethal, however EBV-Lyssavirus, while more lethal than RESHEF, was practically impossible to create and required almost incalculably precise conditions for it's creation, making RESHEF therefore the only viable strain out of the two.
RESHEF proved incredibly lethal in initial tests. Eager to test the virus's lethality on a larger scale, Operation: ULTIMA was greenlit in early 2552, with the goal of administering the virus to a Covenant vessel. While Rose-788 was the BWD's go-to choice for such an operation, certain circumstances made her unavailable and eventually Theo-783 alongside a number of specialised Spartan-IIIs were chosen to carry out the job. Operation: ULTIMA was a resounding success - the team managed to cause an outbreak of the RESHEF virus aboard a Covenant vessel which rapidly caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Covenant lifeforms before it was quarantined, proving RESHEF's lethality and efficiency. Despite this, RESHEF was still very difficult to produce and the second batch, which was rather small in size, was not ready until November of the same year. At that point, the Human-Covenant War was decidedly near it's end and Humanity had taken the fight to the Covenant on Installation 00 by the time it was ready for active deployment. With RESHEF being expensive to produce and the process to do so being expensive and lengthy, Project SUNZI was deemed unnecessary and was shut down by the Office of Naval Intelligence. Surviving RESHEF samples would be used over the coming seven years before RESHEF was declared an existential threat and eradicated in 2559.
=== Post Human-Covenant War ===
==== Agency Reforms ====
The Biological Warfare Division was significantly reformed as it's usefulness began to dry up. Project SUNZI and RESHEF had made the BWD a feared and respected division among the ONI hierarchy - but only to those who knew of what they had produced, and the majority of ONI and the higher-ups of the United Nations Space Command saw the BWD as an unnecessary organisation whos usefulness dried up when Humanity's prime threat was defeated. Instead of being completely dissolved, the agency took on a defensive capacity, operating across Human-controlled space and beyond, working actively to find and eradicate biological and chemical threats to the UNSC, ONI and their interests. Secretly, ONI sanctioned the BWD to continue it's weapons development program in March of 2554 and the clearance to administer RESHEF in appropriate circumstances - with ONI oversight - was granted to them once more.
== Organization ==
== Projects ==
* Project CHRYSAOR - the development of a specialised gas to protect certain individuals from harm.
* Project TALARIA - the development of a viral serum designed to inflict an intense phobia of heights and flying upon the Covenant.
* Project SUNZI - the development of a superlethal virus for usage against the Covenant Empire.
== Operations ==
=== Human-Covenant War ===
* Battle of Natal
* Operation: ULTIMA
== Personnel ==
=== Non-Combatant Personnel ===
=== Combat Personnel ===
* Rose-788
* Theo-783 - Temporarily for Operation: ULTIMA
* Roger Norman