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This topic has moved here: Subject: How Long Did The Covenant Know About The Flood?
  • Subject: How Long Did The Covenant Know About The Flood?
Subject: How Long Did The Covenant Know About The Flood?
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I recently played 'The Pillar of Autumn' and I got to where you get to the maintenance access ways and Cortana says: "The Covenant are destroying all the lifepods! They really don't want us on that ring."

It got me thinking.

Did The Covenant discover The Flood when they grounded with the Humans or could it have happened earlier on? The Covenant's main mission is to recover artifacts of Forerunner techology, so it is definate that if they found Halo, would go and explore.

My main backup to this theory is the fact that The Covenant were trying to stop Humans from getting on Halo, trying hardest to take over the ship. The fact is, this is the first encounter of a Halo and is the very first level. Yet it might not be the Covenant's first encounter with this installation.

After the chase through sub space the Covenant got uptight as The Pillar of Autumn had randomly leaped right next to Halo. They realised that if the Pillar of Autumn were to evacuate because of an attack from the Covenant then Halo would be perfect place for crashlanding and rounding up survivors.

They didn't want to ignore orders and allow the a whole Human Cruiser escape by not attacking, but they also didn't want to attack, making many of the suvivors pile into escape pods and bail onto Halo.

In my opinion that is why they were so persistant in destroying the lifepods. If the Humans got on Halo then they would most likely release the Flood. So the first time they landed on Halo, they found The Flood, locked up the facility really tight and bailed. Then by chance The Pillar of Autumn leaps right next to it, which if Humans landed on would release the Flood and eventually destroy everything.

Tell me your thoughts on this.

  • 07.06.2004 3:23 PM PDT
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i think they have knowen about it the whole time, they just wanted to keep it locked away and refered to it as one of "the many dangers on this ring" but soha 'rolamee (holly crap! i rememberd the name!) faild to do his job (keep the flood containd) so anyway, i bet they knew about it all along.

  • 07.06.2004 3:49 PM PDT
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Again I am bumping my topic upto the 1st page because I didn't get much feedback and this topic took quite a while to write properly.

  • 07.07.2004 1:43 PM PDT
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I think the covenant found the flood shortly after the humans landed on halo. As for why the covenant tried to take the Pillar of Autumn, a plasma torpedo might damege halo. The covenant probaly didn't want hamans on the ring because they would get in the way of finding Foreruner artifacts.

  • 07.07.2004 2:06 PM PDT

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The Cov didn't know about the Flood until it was too late. Remember Pvt. Jenkins Video, someone mentioned that the Cov had worked pretty hard to seal the door where the Flood spores were behind. So if the Cov didn't want the Flood to get out and they knew about it they wouldn't open the door in the first place. They were just as surprised as Capt. Keyes.

The Cov didn't want to humans to land on Halo because that would be sacrelidge, to have these lesser beings even touch something created by the Cov gods(Forerunner). To them humans are scum and do not deserve to live.

  • 07.07.2004 2:29 PM PDT
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BlueReaper says:
So if the Cov didn't want the Flood to get out and they knew about it they wouldn't open the door in the first place. They were just as surprised as Capt. Keyes.


What I meant was, the discovery of The Flood was made on a previous trip. They locked down the door then and then followed the Humans down onto the ring to try and stop them.

  • 07.07.2004 2:36 PM PDT

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But like Cortana, the Cov had found the location of the Halo by the Forerunner artefact found on....Sigma Octanus Four (i believe, in the museum). And so they had also just found out and they had just arrived. To the Cov it was the 4th Halo, but i believe the first that enhabbited the Flood.

So I think thas was their first visit here.

Why do you think they discoverd it earlier, and then left it. They would have guarded it I think.

  • 07.07.2004 3:16 PM PDT
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I think that if they had know the flood were on halo they never would have landed. They would have just nuked the damn thing. Would you go on a ring world that is filled to bursting with parastic lifeforms with the ability to kill you, infect your body and control you to do their bidding with no way of stopping them? In short: light fuse, run away. far away if you don't want flood guts on your visor.

  • 07.07.2004 4:58 PM PDT

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But the covenent were ALREADY on halo before the lifepods landed i mean it takes more than 1 day to get all ur forces onto a planet and into a control room, an island, a ship, a crash spot, a swamp. that takes soemtimes which leads me to belive that the cvenenet were already on halo before the humans arrived, captain keyes at the very begginging say that there are 3 capital ships around the planet WAITING for them and cortana says soemthing like there ships have been faster for along time, which gives me the idea that the covenet new th humans would pass buy the halo and dcied to stop there and set up for an ambush.

  • 07.07.2004 5:06 PM PDT

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and if the coveneet released the flood and then locked them up again ur forgetting one thing, the sentinels and guilty spark, im sure guilty spark would not stand for covenent being on halo.

  • 07.07.2004 5:08 PM PDT
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i think the covenent didn't know about the flood i think they found out about it on accident.this how i think it went. the covenent opend the place were the flood was made then they got attacked by the flood so the loored them back to their holding pins then not long after word the humans mayd a big mistake they opend the main pin and closed it then the flood seen them and got very hungry and the first of the flood broke out and got the pepole out side first then broke out from the inside and got the other peple.

[Edited on 7/7/2004 11:10:57 PM]

  • 07.07.2004 11:08 PM PDT
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This is great information on the FLOOD...
http://halosm.bungie.org/story/flood.html

From what I gather, based on previous novels that Halo is based on, the Covenant have encountered the Flood before, they might have even gassed 2 of their own planets because of them. On this Halo, they were prying into restricted forerunner areas and found the Flood earlier (in days?) and have been locking down the ring in an attempt to contain the flood. I think the covies see the humans as idiots and will spread the Flood further. That is why the Covies are so established when we go through the game, also notice how defensive they are when they are protecting the area around the flood (in 343 gs level). Of course, the Flood are uncontainable and the Covies cannot contain the Flood.

343gs from the Library:
I would conjecture that the other species currently on the installation is responsible for releasing the Flood. They seem most persistant in their attempts to access restricted areas.

Enjoy.


  • 07.08.2004 1:05 PM PDT

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Posted by: Papa John
But the covenent were ALREADY on halo before the lifepods landed i mean it takes more than 1 day to get all ur forces onto a planet and into a control room, an island, a ship, a crash spot, a swamp. that takes soemtimes which leads me to belive that the cvenenet were already on halo before the humans arrived, captain keyes at the very begginging say that there are 3 capital ships around the planet WAITING for them and cortana says soemthing like there ships have been faster for along time, which gives me the idea that the covenet new th humans would pass buy the halo and dcied to stop there and set up for an ambush.


The Covenant hadn't accesed the control room yet and when MC just landed on Halo the Cov were still searching for the Silent Cartographer. So they couldn't have been there long. It took MC only 4 days to move all around Halo, get to the Silent Cartographer, The Controll Room, The Study Facility, The Library, the Power generators and blow up Halo. I think the Covenant would have plenty of time to set up camp in just 1 day.

Anyway, the Cov didn't know humans would find Halo, since Cortana made a "blind" jump through slipspace to get there, so why would they set up an ambush? They didn't expect any visitors.

  • 07.08.2004 2:05 PM PDT
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I don't think that the Covenant knew about the Flood for a couple of reasons, first - the Monitor (oh, i hate his wirey guts) seemed to be very annoyed about the Covenants presence on Halo and was very peeved when they released the flood. The second reason is that the Covenant (knowing the risk of the flood) would have been more prepared to fight the flood, but they weren't, the Flood overwhelmed them, and took the Covenant ships.

  • 07.08.2004 3:04 PM PDT
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dang, us halo players have more issues than a newsstand

  • 07.10.2004 8:35 PM PDT
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im not really sure either way. the game leads u to believe that they did not know about it and discovered it by accident, and then were trying to prevent it killing more of their own.
but it could also be that they blieved it to be some kind of super weapon, and were trying to prevent the humans from getting to it, before they could find out how to use it against the humans.

but the reason that they were killing the escape pods was for "containment". its a simple rule of warfare. they had an advantage over the marines as long as it remained a space battle, so they were rounding them up, and then destroying them, mopping up the few escape pods that did make it onto the HALO.

  • 07.10.2004 8:57 PM PDT