- SpoonGuard
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- Exalted Heroic Member
Posted by: OPTIMASH_SLIME
The animals would then need to evolve again from whatever was left, that could be aided by the increased rate of evolution that the forunners could provide. Although what confuses me is that the forunners took us to the ark (with them?). And if they are all dead, the ark can't have been out of range, then we would be dead too! Unless they did survive, returned us home, but there were so few of them that they could not live on. They then became extinct in as we grew into higher sentience.
Firstly, the Forerunner did not have the ability to control the speed of evolution. They were a Tier 1 Tech species or "World Builders" (1). Yes, they were able to create the Halos and navigate the Galaxy at extremely high speeds, but they still did not possess the ability to manipulate evolution. Thus, what ever was brought into the Ark had to have been very close to making the evolutionary leap into sentience, if not already there. This explains why humans IRL gained sentience roughly 100,000 years ago (according to fossil records).
As for the issue of there being no Forerunner left, we touched on this briefly earlier in the thread and can be explained simply by logistical efficiency.
The core of the Ark was protected by advanced Forerunner shields that blocked, among other things, communication signals. Because of this, it would only make sense that the Forerunner would have to be outside of this protective area to index the galaxy and simultaneously wage an interstellar war against the Flood. The war had already been going on for centuries and had undoubtedly taken a toll on the population level of the Foreunner (the primary combatants).
That they were forced to activate the Rings at all would suggest that the decision was made under only the most dire of circumstances: the imminent threat of the Flood breaching the Ark's defenses, or at least those of one of the portals.
So, following this line of reasoning, it would seem that those Forerunner remaining at the time of the Array's activation were within it's blast radius, defending the Ark, and were destroyed. Once the Flood was given ample time to "starve" and degenerate, it would be only a matter of AI-led Forerunner machines shepherding those saved species back to their home worlds.
Posted by: OPTIMASH_SLIME
I suppose taking the whole ecosystem is a bit 'far out', but with the instantanious and fairly safe method of transport the portal provided, it can't have been that much hastle to save a little more than just us. maybe they could have taken the next species most likely to atcheive sentience.
Not necessarily. I admit the "entire ecosystem" example was a bit much. However, consider that the Ark had one, single planetoid at it's center. One planet for a galaxy's worth of sentient life. Barring the issue of pure numbers, the level of logistical issues involved would make the whole process almost impossible. How would they keep the different species from killing each-other over land or cultural differences. What about immune systems and any bacteria that one species might carry with it to the Ark? Humanity has a strong resistance to hundreds if not thousands of types of microbes on Earth but that does not mean another race has the same immunity to the same bugs.
Making sure all of this is taken care of would be hard enough. In my opinion, it would not be worth it to bring dolphins or horses along too just in case they happened to evolve within a few thousand years.