- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Prehaps the Forerunners are ancient, highly-evolved humans that created the Halo rings and contained the Flood, as a weapon to combat the ancient Covenant ancestors in a war began millenia ago? This would explain why Cortanna knows about the Forerunner and Halo's systems so well. She might be the remnant of ancient human (Forerunner) AI constructs.
Let's presume that the ancient Covenant worshipped a ring much like Halo, but not a Halo containing the Flood. The Forerunner humans could have created fake rings and sent it to the ancient Covenant homeworld, as a "Trojan horse". When the Covenant discovered them, they would open it and the Flood would destroy all Covenant on the planet, ending the war. The ring discovered in the game could have been a wandering off-course ring that both sides had completly forgotten about. everyone except Cortanna, of course.