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This topic has moved here: Subject: The Precursor, The Flood, and the Acceleration of Evolution (V2)
  • Subject: The Precursor, The Flood, and the Acceleration of Evolution (V2)
Subject: The Precursor, The Flood, and the Acceleration of Evolution (V2)
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“To say more would spoil be it’s overall its a game that needs to be played.” - Aristotle

Posted by: Count Fudjula
i just read the halopedia page on the precursor`s(again) and saw this line.... The term Precursor means "one that precedes and indicates the approach of another". The term supports that it surpassed the Forerunner. but could the line mean that it indicates the approach of humanity assuming the mantle(if this is in the post just ignore)

Sorry it took me so long to get back with you, I didn't even see that anybody else had posted on this.

Personally, I took it to mean that the Precursor preceded and indicated the approach of another, in this case the Flood, which wiped them all out as this theory portrays it. I don't consider Humanity a very important part in the overall soap opera that is the universe, to be honest.

  • 05.02.2010 7:46 AM PDT
Subject: The Precursor, The Flood, and the Acceleration of Evolution: V2.6
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I feelz like returning this thread to the forums!

  • 05.10.2010 2:39 PM PDT

Wow.

That was extremely well written and incredibly interesting.

One thing though.

In your post you refer to "trans-sentience" quite a lot. What is your definition of trans-sentience?

  • 05.21.2010 8:02 AM PDT
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“To say more would spoil be it’s overall its a game that needs to be played.” - Aristotle

Posted by: El Diablo2710
In your post you refer to "trans-sentience" quite a lot. What is your definition of trans-sentience?

Trans-sentience is difficult to describe, mainly because we have no idea what it really is. In my own definition it just means a view of the galaxy and of information so broad and all-encompassing that they basically understand all of the core makeup of our universe. Is that what it really is? Who knows.

  • 05.21.2010 1:11 PM PDT

Thanks for clearing that up. Once I have some more time to think it over I will probably post more questions if you don't mind.

  • 05.21.2010 1:23 PM PDT

reading that was like climbing a mountain in fog, i didn't know when the end wold come but it would be worth it when i got there... nice theory btw

  • 05.25.2010 1:39 PM PDT
Subject: The Precursor, The Flood, and the Acceleration of Evolution (V2)

With all the reading of the Halo books and on the internet i have done this is the conclusion i have come to.

The precursors were more advanced than the forerunners but were as the forerunners used their technology for peace the precursors were warmongers. Evidence suggested the precursors were not the only ones of their time and they fought devastating wars. In order to win the precursors designed the Flood. It was supposed to be immune to the most hostile environmental conditions possible but they weren't able to make them immune to very high temperature. eg fire. They still used the flood to take over people and go undercover as well as fighting and doing some recon. Since they had a central brain aka "Gravemind" it didn't matter if they died, the knowledge they learnt was still recoreded by the gravemind and passed onto the precursors. They trusted the flood with the most important tasks like defense, recon and invasion, but that was their undoing. Eventually the Gravemind had aqquired a wealth of knowledge that allowed it develop its own brain and "will." It then procceded to turn on it's masters and since they were so trusted the flood easily killed them. Whether this happened before or after the precursor's enemies were killed is unknown. The flood then ate everything in their galaxy because they needed to live and their objctive wasn't completed. It's entire reason for being created was to destroy threats. It saw any living species as a threat. Eventually it attacked the forerunners and you know the rest of the story.

  • 05.25.2010 4:58 PM PDT
Subject: The Precursor, The Flood, and the Acceleration of Evolution: V2.6

*Sips tea*

*blinks a few times after reading for about 30 minutes*

Wow, great theory(ies)!

What I love about these is they give me something to consider and think about. I'd never really considered that the Precursor and Flood have anything to do with each other...And now I have more to think about.

And the implications if the Flood's "Programming" could be reset or changed! What if someone "reprogrammed" the Flood?

*chills*

They need to clarify this!

Posted by: Lord Snakie
I don't consider Humanity a very important part in the overall soap opera that is the universe, to be honest.


Well, I know the whole "We're humans and we suck" kind of thing is pretty easy to follow...

The Forerunner DID choose us to be their Reclaimers for a reason. We obviously matter SOMEHOW.

There's also the whole "Humans are Precursor" theroy.

[Edited on 05.26.2010 12:33 AM PDT]

  • 05.26.2010 12:31 AM PDT

Posted by: Time Glitch
And the implications if the Flood's "Programming" could be reset or changed! What if someone "reprogrammed" the Flood?

*chills*

They need to clarify this!

The Forerunner DID choose us to be their Reclaimers for a reason. We obviously matter SOMEHOW.

There's also the whole "Humans are Precursor" theroy.


Humans couldn't possibly be precursor because of what i said above, they were wiped out. Precursors only cared about themselves and if they couldn't beat the flood no one could.

Forerunners chose us to be their reclaimers for one very improtant reason but first u need some background info.

The forerunners were a peaceful race. They made technology to improve their lives and other species as well. They didn't have any warring weapons only defensive ones. When the flood attacked they fought desperatly to defeat them. Ultimately they had no choice but to build the Halo rings and the arks. When they were building a portal on Earth they saw humans and chose them as the reclaimers for 3 reasons
1. They resembled their geneic structure. ie. looked the same
so programming forerunner devices to only activate for them was easy
2. Humans were in another galaxy. The flood would take time to get to their galaxy so humans could advance in technology and use forerunner technology(but the humans never found the forerunner relics)
3. Because the forerunner failed to stop the flood and only keep it "down" for a while, they failed their ultimate dream of universal peace and left the other species to die

  • 05.26.2010 8:10 PM PDT
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“To say more would spoil be it’s overall its a game that needs to be played.” - Aristotle

Posted by: EmbodyingEarth
Humans couldn't possibly be precursor because of what i said above, they were wiped out. Precursors only cared about themselves and if they couldn't beat the flood no one could.

Your entire post is filled with assumption, and this is the worst- you say the Precursor couldn't possibly be humans because you totally guess that the Precursor were selfish and warmongering when there's no evidence to support that?

The Precursor could've rather easily been Humankind.

  • 05.27.2010 4:55 AM PDT
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you're naut cookin'

2. Humans were in another galaxy. The flood would take time to get to their galaxy so humans could advance in technology and use forerunner technology(but the humans never found the forerunner relics)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this? Are you saying that Humanity and Forerunner didn't both live in the Milky Way? There is a lot of evidence to support that they did.

  • 05.27.2010 6:21 AM PDT

Let me put it this way. In galaxy 1 where majority of the forerunner were it was them vs flood. in galaxy 2 they built portal to ark. From what i understand forerunners either left our galaxy to fight the flood or they were only here temporarily.

Also to the other guy, i found a lot of this info searching a lot of sites. I was just too busy to list all the resources and write the info properly

  • 05.27.2010 9:49 PM PDT
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you're naut cookin'

Without the sources though, theres no validity.

The Forerunner are said to have either died with the Halo Array firing, or left the galaxy because of the shame of letting down The Mantle.
So yeah, they didn't leave to fight the Flood elsewhere. As far as they knew, the Flood were extra-galaxicial, but weren't necessarily engaged with other Forerunner outside the Milky Way.

The Primary Pioneer Group is said to have found the Flood on G617 g1, and before that had no knowledge of them. That info can be found in Terminal 6, Halo 3.

  • 05.27.2010 10:36 PM PDT

i see

  • 05.28.2010 10:08 PM PDT

Great theory, and a very plausible one. Actually a pretty fun read.

Here's a couple things I've been wondering about... forgive me if my logic takes complete U-turns a few times...

When the Flood were quarantined on Halo for thousands of years, we cam assume that they were deprived of both calcium and knowledge. Without the calcium, the population was unable to grow (which it really didn't need to in such a confined state). Without the knowledge, it is very likely that the Flood and the Gravemind forgot much of their knowledge, possibly enough to make them forget their core functions.

Think about it. As Chief moves in to stop Truth from activating the rings, the Gravemind is obviously able to speak and function through the Flood minions, as he speaks directly to the Chief to form a temporary alliance. However, in the first Halo and in the second book, a Flood form is unable to fully infect Wallace A. Jenkins. Given Jenkins' semi-deformity after the attack, it can be assumed that the infection form had sufficient physical capability to complete the infection. However, it seemed unable to have the knowledge to completely destroy Jenkins once and for all. If even the Gravemind still fully knew how to infect, he could have made direct assistance.

In my opinion, the Gravemind may not have simply forgot the information he had at the end of the Forerunner-Flood War. He may have deleted it. As an artificial construct, the Gravemind must have had some limit to memory. He had to have taken in an enormous amount of information after all the casualties in the Forerunner-Flood War, and it just may have been too much.

Indexing life takes up a lot of memory, as seen with Cortana after she takes in the data from the Index. That amount of data impeded Cortana's ability to function. Similarly, the Gravemind may have had too much information, and needed to delete a large amount just to maintain functionality for 100,000 years. He kept just enough information to continue to be able to catalog life, while trying to save as much history as he could.

When the Flood was finally released, the Gravemind could have been desperate for new knowledge, and in a stage of anger. The Flood, slightly unaware of their primary task, attacked everything in site. Once the Gravemind once again had enough intelligence to remember his purpose and his mortality, he helped the Chief stop Truth, in an attempt to not only save himself, but to preserve the existence of life within the galaxy, thus keeping himself capable of pursuing his original task.

I'm not so sure that the Gravemind ever reached the stage of jealousy. If he had, he might have assisted the Covenant, knowing that it would destroy vast amounts of life. In a stage of jealousy, he may have even believed he could discover a way to exist permanently with all sentient life gone.

DID YOU THINK ME DEFEATED!? I have beaten fleets of thousands! Consumed a galaxy of flesh and mind and bone!
If I'm not mistaken, this line is said near the beginning of the "Cortana". The Gravemind does not particularly like other organisms trying to destroy him, so he flaunts his accomplishments in the Forerunner-Flood War in an attempt to discourage the Chief. He is only so hostile to the Chief because the wants to eradicate him (rendering him incapable of his duties), as did the Forerunners.

Do I take life, or give it? Who is victim... and who is foe?
I take a slightly different meaning to this quote. At this point in the level, the Gravemind might be beginning to believe that the Chief will destroy him. I believe that he is challenging humanity's view of what humanity considers to be a "war" with the Flood. Humanity insists that the Flood treats it as a foe, but the Gravemind might actually consider lost sentients to be "collateral damage" in desire to obtain knowledge. In the Gravemind's opinion, he does not destroy life; he stores the knowledge and memories, enabling the organism to "live on", in a manner of speaking. In attempting to justify his actions justifying his actions, the Gravemind is confused over whether to kill the Chief or try to make peace.

Maybe not much of what I just said makes sense (your knowledge of canon is far more expansive), but it's at least an interesting thing to think about. The Gravemind may have just been following orders all along, but caught between his duties and his need to stay alive to perform those duties.

[Edited on 05.28.2010 11:41 PM PDT]

  • 05.28.2010 11:38 PM PDT
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“To say more would spoil be it’s overall its a game that needs to be played.” - Aristotle

Posted by: pioTROFFski
The Gravemind isn't so much an artificial construct as it is an engineered construct, formed out of organic compounds but controlled via genetic coding. As it took on new hosts, it would gain more "nodes" with which to store information. The only way that the Gravemind might ever have an inability to store data is if the Flood suddenly suffered a huge loss of hosts, which is what happened at the end of the Forerunner-Flood war. It's safe to assume that the Gravemind might have lost data here, yes, but he most certainly didn't delete any "core functions"; the Gravemind was wiped out by the Halo's firing, and thus didn't have a chance to "lose" anything at all. The truth is, all that was preserved by the Flood was preserved in the form of Spores, Infection Forms, and any remaining Pure forms.

Now, think of "core functions" like your instincts. The Flood have an instinct to catalog, as you put it; that's like our instinct to eat. No matter how stupid one human is, it will always have the desire to eat; it is built in to our genetic code. Similarly, the Flood will always have a desire to catalog. The issue in The Flood with the Infection Form trying to consume Jenkins was that the form was rather weak when trying to consume him (which is stated in the novel), not that it was too confused or unaware of what it was supposed to be doing.

Well-thought-out post, though, good reasoning skills.

  • 05.29.2010 8:09 AM PDT

Posted by: pioTROFFski
When the Flood were quarantined on Halo for thousands of years, we cam assume that they were deprived of both calcium and knowledge. Without the calcium, the population was unable to grow (which it really didn't need to in such a confined state). Without the knowledge, it is very likely that the Flood and the Gravemind forgot much of their knowledge, possibly enough to make them forget their core functions.

Think about it. As Chief moves in to stop Truth from activating the rings, the Gravemind is obviously able to speak and function through the Flood minions, as he speaks directly to the Chief to form a temporary alliance. However, in the first Halo and in the second book, a Flood form is unable to fully infect Wallace A. Jenkins. Given Jenkins' semi-deformity after the attack, it can be assumed that the infection form had sufficient physical capability to complete the infection. However, it seemed unable to have the knowledge to completely destroy Jenkins once and for all. If even the Gravemind still fully knew how to infect, he could have made direct assistance.


The reason flood couldn't take over Jenkins was becauses of Boren's Syndrome. On Paris IV when opening a crate of plasma grenades some people such as Johnson and Jenkins were afflicted with the disease. Some combination of the disease's (apparently) multiple pathologies discourages Flood Super Cells. It is not quite known but why it stops flood from taking over but it may be that the nervous system of someone with the disease simply cannot support Flood. One joke by some people is that they find people that smoke to "taste" bad so they ditch them. Got this info from Halo Wikia - Boren's Syndrome and from either Halo: Flood or First Strike. I forgot. My bad

  • 05.29.2010 1:05 PM PDT
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“To say more would spoil be it’s overall its a game that needs to be played.” - Aristotle

Posted by: EmbodyingEarth
The reason flood couldn't take over Jenkins was becauses of Boren's Syndrome. On Paris IV when opening a crate of plasma grenades some people such as Johnson and Jenkins were afflicted with the disease. Some combination of the disease's (apparently) multiple pathologies discourages Flood Super Cells. It is not quite known but why it stops flood from taking over but it may be that the nervous system of someone with the disease simply cannot support Flood. One joke by some people is that they find people that smoke to "taste" bad so they ditch them. Got this info from Halo Wikia - Boren's Syndrome and from either Halo: Flood or First Strike. I forgot. My bad

Don't use Halo wikia and expect to be respected on this forum, ever. I hate to be brutal, but it's ridiculously inaccurate in some of the most critical places, like this one.

For starters, Johnson was the only one to have "Boren's Syndrome", and it was merely a cover-up to hide his Spartan-I augmentations, which were the real reason the Flood form could not infect him. I hasten to add that the Flood form not infecting him was a one-in-one-million chance. Jenkins was infected, but retained shreds of his personality due to the Infection form that contacted him being weakened by its prolonged hibernation.

  • 05.29.2010 5:28 PM PDT

"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum

Posted by: Lord Snakie
For starters, Johnson was the only one to have "Boren's Syndrome", and it was merely a cover-up to hide his Spartan-I augmentations, which were the real reason the Flood form could not infect him. I hasten to add that the Flood form not infecting him was a one-in-one-million chance. Jenkins was infected, but retained shreds of his personality due to the Infection form that contacted him being weakened by its prolonged hibernation.

Didn't the Halo Graphic Novel retcon that? It shows Johnson just fighting his way out, without any Flood getting a chance to even touch him, so there is really no way of knowing for sure if his condition offers protection. Or is that Halo:CE cutscene on the level 343 Guilty Spark still holding weight?, because that shows him getting infected.

  • 05.29.2010 5:40 PM PDT

The absolute most important question at this time is "where are they now"? If they aren't dead, then where are they?

The great journey ;)

[Edited on 05.29.2010 5:47 PM PDT]

  • 05.29.2010 5:46 PM PDT

Lord Snakie, I have a feeling you and I will not be friends.

  • 05.29.2010 7:28 PM PDT
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“To say more would spoil be it’s overall its a game that needs to be played.” - Aristotle

Posted by: anton1792
Didn't the Halo Graphic Novel retcon that? It shows Johnson just fighting his way out, without any Flood getting a chance to even touch him, so there is really no way of knowing for sure if his condition offers protection. Or is that Halo:CE cutscene on the level 343 Guilty Spark still holding weight?, because that shows him getting infected.

No, HGN retconned his escape being 100% due to his Spartan-I augmentations; basically, it retconned his immunity to the Flood. It turned it from immunity to a one-in-a-million chance where his S-I augments protected him from that single, weakened form long enough for him to pull it off and run.


Posted by: EmbodyingEarth
Lord Snakie, I have a feeling you and I will not be friends.

What, because I tell the truth and know my facts? Stupid reason to be enemies.

  • 05.30.2010 9:07 AM PDT

"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum

Posted by:Lord Snakie
No, HGN retconned his escape being 100% due to his Spartan-I augmentations; basically, it retconned his immunity to the Flood. It turned it from immunity to a one-in-a-million chance where his S-I augments protected him from that single, weakened form long enough for him to pull it off and run.

Ahh right I see. Click!. So the S-I augments only offer temporary resistance, and even then, only against weakened forms.

  • 05.30.2010 9:19 AM PDT
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“To say more would spoil be it’s overall its a game that needs to be played.” - Aristotle

Posted by: anton1792
Ahh right I see. Click!. So the S-I augments only offer temporary resistance, and even then, only against weakened forms.

Right; a one-in-a-million shot that doesn't make Johnson invulnerable, just protected in some extremely rare (really unprecedented) situations.

  • 05.30.2010 9:22 AM PDT