Count Zero muses on the source of Bungie's creativity in the latest edition of The HBO Mailbag.

Halo Babies has a new comic today, as well as new concept art for the Baby MC's new suit. Thanks mrsmiley.

The night-owls among you may have noticed that Bungie.net is at least partially back online, and with it, the new My Groups feature that replace the Chapters that were part of the old Seventh Column site seems to be nearly ready. Links to look for existing Groups or create new ones are on the Community page of Bungie.net along with the forums. Right now there's only one Group theme; a theme builder is coming soon according to Achronos.

The site that aims to be the ultimate repository for all things Halo, The Library, has been updated. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO. Looks like you still need to know where to look to find things, though, as there's no search page yet.

guS and Burnie have written up their own compendious Halo 2 Preview based on their trip to Bungie, complete with photos of themselves and other Bungie staff and fans, and a nice rundown on maps, vehicles and weapons.

Anton P. Nym, author of the Enkidu Terminals fan fiction, has been following the I Love Bees ARG quite closely on the Fireflies wiki he's created. In recent developments, "trustworthy" players are apparently being drawn more deeply into the game, interacting directly with Melissa. He's posted about it in our bees forum.

Bungie.net will be down for a bit on the 23rd, according to SketchFactor, so that Bungie.net can be upgraded to pave the way for the new 7th Column site. Cool new things are afoot, stay tuned!

Louis Wu at HBO pointed out mentions in the HBO forum and elsewhere about several different Halo tournaments in September and October; we've added them to our list of events.

Rockslider has posted in the HBO forum about a new scenario for generating megabattles in Halo in the Fun and challenges section of his site; it details using an early stolen Banshee in Assault on the Control Room to generate a situation he calls the spiral path megabattle. The end result is a conflict between 50 or so Covenant ground troops and you, supported by Marines. Cool!

A GameStop manager identifying himself as tenaciousdave, who has apparently made a habit of posting about the annual store conferences he attends, has indicated that Microsoft is telling retail operations that Halo 2 will have cooperative play over the network, a feature that has in no way been confirmed by Bungie. Take it with some salt, people. Thanks Rams at HaloPlanet.

HaloTV.net is giving away 10 Plantronics Halo 2 headsets for free; details are in their Headset Giveaway Forum. Editor's Note: That forum thread just mentions the real giveaway thread; to be able to see that thread, you need to register on the site.