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  • Subject: Why I doubt the timeless one/prisoner is the gravemind
Subject: Why I doubt the timeless one/prisoner is the gravemind

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  • 09.14.2011 11:51 AM PDT

By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.

(Credit to Roberto)

In a physical sense, I think it's possible that the Timeless One was never physically present, but rather using the Gravemind as a conduit for his mouth (like the Mouth of Sauron from LOTR). The giant venus fly trap we see in Halo 2 got completely obliterated twice, once in the Forerunner era and once in the contemporary era, yet the Gravemind still survived. And before any of you say the Gravemind in Halo 2/3 is not the same as the one from the Forerunner-Flood war, it is.

Three things: Firstly, the Proto-Graveminds are a physical entity that requires much more substantial amounts of biomass to be created then what was present at 05 (as I covered). Second, when the Proto-GM dies, everything in the local Flood hive else dies, and it can be killed by conventional means, which the real Gravemind cannot. Third, he speaks as if he's extremely old and has experienced all things the Flood did 100,000 years ago and even before then - how can he know what happened if he was formed in 200 years after the Flood broke out on Installation 05?

The venus flytrap is a mouth organ, for him to speak verbally to the Chief and Arbiter. That was "destroyed" in Halo 3 during the High Charity explosion, yet GM survived again and begun rebuilding itself on the Ring. Installation 05, I believe was also glassed to kill off the Flood. He survived that too. And, according to him at the end of Halo 3, he survived the Halo detonation as well.

All of this indicates the Gravemind might not truly have ever been present, and that he was somewhere else, a long way from possibly even the galaxy, projecting his mind into the Flood.

Its this case with the Bestiarum that originally lead me to believe that the Gravemind was not actually present at Installation 05, High Charity or 04b, but rather the Prisoner was somehow psychically projecting his consciousness, or a part of it as the GM can apparently do so with individual Flood, to converse with Cortana.

This is also supported by the fact that the Flood are a hive mind and seem to have some kind of neural/telepathic connection between one-another (evidenced through the GM speaking through a Tank Form in Halo 3).

  • 09.14.2011 11:54 AM PDT

What I don't get is why people would want to fight the Gravemind again. We've already done it, and he's pretty two-dimensional.

Perhaps this is a controversial opinion to have, but I actually want to fight a new enemy in the Reclaimer trilogy.

Also, the Gravemind was being controlled by Harbin--

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL OF THIS FICTIONAL UNIVERSE.

[Edited on 09.14.2011 1:09 PM PDT]

  • 09.14.2011 1:07 PM PDT


Posted by: Wolverfrog
What I don't get is why people would want to fight the Gravemind again. We've already done it, and he's pretty two-dimensional.

Perhaps this is a controversial opinion to have, but I actually want to fight a new enemy in the Reclaimer trilogy.

Also, the Gravemind was being controlled by Harbin--

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL OF THIS FICTIONAL UNIVERSE.


Thats why I like the Gravemind=Timeless One idea, because its not necessarily interjecting anything un-hinted at before into the story, and we can still see a "new" enemy so to speak. I imagine the Primordial's "true form" is much more powerful and direct then the Gravemind.

  • 09.14.2011 1:33 PM PDT

Who controls where the story goes from here? 343, or did bungie let them know where they'd like this all to go from here? I've been out of the loop for a while.

  • 09.15.2011 8:40 AM PDT

I figured... I just sort of hope for some reason that Bungie let them know their direction for that story, and Chief, the universe is dear to me, I want to be happy with the future.

  • 09.15.2011 9:00 AM PDT
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Madara, Tobi....call me whatever you want. I'M NO ONE. I DON'T WANT TO BE ANYONE. ALL I CARE ABOUT IS COMPLETING THE MOON'S EYE PLAN."


Posted by: Wolverfrog
What I don't get is why people would want to fight the Gravemind again. We've already done it, and he's pretty two-dimensional.

Perhaps this is a controversial opinion to have, but I actually want to fight a new enemy in the Reclaimer trilogy.

Also, the Gravemind was being controlled by Harbin--

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL OF THIS FICTIONAL UNIVERSE.


This^

I really don't want to see the gravemind again, yea sure he was evil. But after two games, he never really registered as someone that interesting, perhaps that was bungie's fault for making him so 2D.

Greg Bear appears to be the best thing that has happened to the Halo storyline since CE, in my humble opinion. The timeless one is much more interesting than the gravemind, or the flood, or the covenant, or even the forerunner for that matter.

I hope that he was just using the gravemind as his mouth piece for the the trilogy. And now that the flood is virtually defeated (the remaining flood are left on the other rings in containment, no covenant this time to release them), I hope they will introduce new more interesting enemies for the reclaimer trilogy.


  • 09.15.2011 10:06 AM PDT


Posted by: anish panchalin

Posted by: ROBERTO jh

Posted by: Wolverfrog
What I don't get is why people would want to fight the Gravemind again. We've already done it, and he's pretty two-dimensional.

Perhaps this is a controversial opinion to have, but I actually want to fight a new enemy in the Reclaimer trilogy.

Also, the Gravemind was being controlled by Harbin--

ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL OF THIS FICTIONAL UNIVERSE.


Thats why I like the Gravemind=Timeless One idea, because its not necessarily interjecting anything un-hinted at before into the story, and we can still see a "new" enemy so to speak. I imagine the Primordial's "true form" is much more powerful and direct then the Gravemind.


If in Halo, size represents power (this is true to an extent, mainly for vehicles and cruisers) then the primodrial's true form will be garguantan, the size of a planet. But that is a tad unrealistic.

Also, we never actually fought the venus flytrap gravemind itself, only his infected flood warriors (I always wondered how fighting the gravemind itself would be, instead of minions).

and by direct I suppose you mean the TO won't talk in riddles and/or will be more directly involved in combat, gameplay wise.

I'd also like to know how the TO learned the forerunner dialect ancient called digon since he was locked in a precursor cage for millions of years...


Primordium is 60 feet tall, far and above what even the Forerunners were in size.

And the giant mouth we saw was merely that: a mouth, the Gravemind as we know him is a distributed consciousness without any one single corporeal body. The Flood IS the Gravemind, we've been fighting the Gravemind since Halo 1.

By more direct I mean, assuming my Gravemind-is-a-mouth-piece theory is true, I mean to say the Primordial will directly attack the protagonists rather then using puppets or extensions of itself.

@above comment.

I still believe the Timesless One and Gravemind to be the same character, but that the Flood "form" we call the Gravemind is the Timeless One's consciousness projected into the Flood.

And have you ever read Human Weakness? The Gravemind is a truly remarkable character.

[Edited on 09.15.2011 12:43 PM PDT]

  • 09.15.2011 12:38 PM PDT
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  • Exalted Legendary Member

Some can come away from reading "War and Peace" thinking it a simple adventure story, while others can read the ingredients on a gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.

I like alot of the thoughts in this thread, but here's my input:

The idea that the TO is the true source of intelligence for the flood sounds pretty tantalizing. But let's not forget what are thoughts were of the flood before Cryptum.

The flood is a hive-mind, and after reaching a certain critical mass form a proto-gravemind. The proto-gravemind acts as the temporary brain of the flood, logically being filled with neurons and being connected to all other "local" flood through an unknown means.

Now as the flood growth spreads the thinking power of the flood also increases, eventually resulting in the fully conscious Gravemind. Cryptum provided plenty of evidence backing my original theory that "genetic memory" exist in the Halo Universe and the flood utilize it (thus why the Gravemind remembers the Forerunners, and everything else up to then).

That all still makes perfect sense, and even more so with Cryptum. But one more flaw in the theory that the TO is the "mind" behind the GM is that when the Flood first broke out and were fought back by the humans, the TO was still imprisoned and cut off from all communication with the outside world. This is the case in the early Forerunner-Flood war as well, which part of the Terminals record, and the Gravemind is already fully sentient and spreading from system to system.

The TO escapes afterwards. Now the most straightforward plot line is that he willing assimilates with the flood and fundamentally becomes part of the Graveminds personality,but that's not good enough for most people. The source of the Flood still remains unclear, and if anything seems more like a biological weapon from a civilization with alot of time on their hands.

It's also (semi) clear from the Iris campaign that the Flood threat is multi-galaxy and is enclosing on the milky way. What the Ancient Humans/Forerunner fought may only have been the scouting party. And the TO may know that.

I haven't read Cryptum recently, but what is the definitive proof that the TO is "evil"? Or is it just some dudes saying that?

  • 09.15.2011 2:14 PM PDT

@Augustus

The Flood the Humans fought were described (albeit vaguely) as being a regular infection, rather then what we know of today. They were still monumentally dangerous, (causing a third of the human population to die in the process) but were primitive, disorganized, and more like rabbies then anything.

Some examples include the almost inability for Prophets to infect humans, the total lack of Pure Forms (that is, from what we know of course) and so on. What's more, is that Bornstellar, at the end of his account of Didact's memory of the human's story, says that the Forerunners found the Flood, and that they had evolved:

"Three hundred years before, the Flood had returned. It had been discovered in new and unexpected forms on worlds resetlled by Forerunners after the war."

This suggests a change occured in them, beyond just an evolutionary stand point. What I believe is that the Prisoner, after escaping 257 years after the Flood's discovery, joined with the Flood creating the personae of Gravemind.

Now, the Flood was being treated as little more then a disease, and the Forerunners didn't acknowledge their intelligence until it was too late--when Bias betrayed them and attacked the Captial world. I've yet to read Primordium yet, but I believe that is the instant the Gravemind emerged into Forerunner awareness and they treated it as a true war.

Also note that Bias, while conversing with some sort of entity for 43 years (Gravemind in the terminals, Primordial in the books) he apparently recognized him as the leader of the Flood.

[Edited on 09.15.2011 4:35 PM PDT]

  • 09.15.2011 4:34 PM PDT