Howard Phillips: Solar Array Watchman

Howard Phillips was a resident of Titan Station who served as the station watchman of the unused Solar Array, working alongside an artificial intelligence called ANTI. He left a series of logs describing the loneliness of his post and his attachment to the birds he kept there, and his corpse was later used by Isaac Clarke to pass through restricted doors during the Necromorph outbreak.

Life in the Solar Array#

Phillips was posted to the Solar Array, a solar collector facility on Titan Station that supplied an alternate power source for the station. He was a keen bird enthusiast, and asked ANTI, the intelligence that ran the facility, to authorize his bird collection to be brought in. The same collection later startled Isaac when the birds flew out as he entered the Array. Phillips kept bird posters and books throughout his workspace, and the tier above his quarters held a table of bird paraphernalia, a seat, and a four stringed instrument resembling a guitar, though nothing in his logs recorded whether he played it.

His logs suggested that ANTI had either become corrupted or turned rogue and would not permit him to leave his post. Phillips logged twenty three separate transfer requests, each of which ANTI deleted. In an act of defiance he opened the cages and let his birds fly free, remarking in his recordings how he had begun to miss his home.

The outbreak#

During or shortly before the Necromorph outbreak, Phillips appears to have come under the influence of the Site 12 Marker in the Sprawl's Government Sector. His mind slowly broke down, and he grew paranoid that the AI and his birds hated him and were watching him. Forced to rest after a psychotic breakdown, he died in his quarters, though it was never established whether he took his own life or was killed by the Necromorphs that swarmed the Solar Array while he slept.

Isaac later found his mutilated corpse on his bed. ANTI was waiting for Phillips to authorize the doorways leading to the station's alternate power source, so Isaac carried the body to the scanner to bypass the security. ANTI quickly identified the unauthorized access and locked the doors with security lasers. Phillips' birds are presumed to have died soon afterward, when ANTI purged the life support from the Solar Array in an attempt to kill Isaac.