- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
The Forerunners have sort of lurked in the shadows of the Halo universe for some time. There has never been much information given out on them in the books, and we only recieve bits and pieces of information from Halo, Halo:The Flood, and Halo: First Strike. What I have heard of though is that these Prophets and Engineers who are very weak physically, but unusually strong mentally had lived once peacefully on their home world. But in the early years of their species the Forerunners were observing them and then came down onto their homeworld and left technology which was very unknown to them. The Prophet race became very interested into the technology and artifacts the Forerunners had left them, and it came almost to the point where they would kill each other just to get to the information first. Realizing that they were too weak to fight their own battles, they basically abducted other races (i.e. Elites, Jackals, Grunts, Hunters, Brutes, etc.), taught them of the Forerunner and what they thought was their plan or destiny with what they found.
As you can tell the other Covenant races compared to the Prophets and Engineers are quite unintelligent so it was probably easy for them to be persuaded. Now the Prophet leaders had an army of billions and billions of soldiers fighting for them, and each race had a specific purpose in their caste system. The Prophets were the leaders (politically and religiously); the Engineers were basically well, the head engineers who could build almost anything; the Elites and Brutes were the closest race to the Prophets since they were much more intelligent tactically than the others, and much stronger; the Hunters seem to be next since they take no orders from the weaker races such as Grunts and Jackals. Below the Hunters in the caste system are the Jackals who are almost like the stealthy race with amazing hearing, sight and a smaller frame which makes it harder to see them; and at the very bottom of the caste system are the Grunts who are weak by themselves but extremely deadly en masse.
It now seemed to the Prophets that they had all they needed to fight off any race that would come in conflict with them trying to find and observe more Forerunner technology. As Earth and humans began to grow as a society, the humans began to explore other planets and more of space. As you can tell when the Covenant saw these humans who the believe were lesser beings, beginning to make their homes on planets which the Covenant thought were rich with Forerunner technology they became angry. The Prophets saw this threat to their religion and cultures and began to attack so they would be able to wipe out the race so there would never be an interfeirance with them again.
[color=yellow](Speculation)[/color]One thing I found interesting though is maybe the Prophets found something in the humans and their technology that they didn't want to believe. They found that we had some Forerunner techology and were using it. Could it be that maybe the Prophets think that this race could be lets say the "bastard-child" of the Forerunners. But then why would they want to destroy something they are working so hard to find? Maybe they think thought that if the humans didn't realize what the truth of the Forerunners was they could stumble upon something so powerful and great that we could do something with that object that could destroy them or their beliefs. If the other Covenant races found out that all the Prophets had told them was a lie, than then there would be a massive rebellion since all the pain and suffering they had gone through was a for a case and religion that didn't even exist.
If you look into First Strikewhen Dr. Halsey and some Spartans found that mysterious artifact undergound in Reach the Covenant gathered a massive force to try to retrieve it from them. Could it be that the Covenant though that the humans could be a threat to this object and could destroy it? The thing was though when the thousands of Covenant had Dr.Halsey and the Spartans at a deadly gun point range when the had the artifact the would fire at them because they knew once stray shot could destroy it. But isn't it a coincidence that the Covenant were right after all. The Marine named, Lochhart destroyed the artificat (and himself) after they had gotten off Reach because his feelings for a lady pilot killed by the Covenant were strong enough to make him destroy it. If the Covenant had gotten ahold of it though the humans chances of winning the war would be hopeless. Was it a good thing that the artifact was destroyed, or was it the wrong thing to do because one mans feelings got in the way of his judgemeant?
What bothers me though is that no matter how many times we look into these clues it seems like it always leads to a dead end. We need more information to be able to have a way to clarify just a bit of this information so we wouldn't always have to speculate on "dead-end" facts. Hopefully when Halo 2 and possibly another book come out we can get some of these things cleared up for once.