- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I've heard this message before. It was on HBO, I believe. And it can be heard within that music sketches in a number of locations including where Arbiter was brought before the Hierachs the second time in The Arbiter(hence, a "Whisper in the Storm"-catchy metaphor, no?). It can be heard on the level Quarantine Zone as you descend up the gondola into the Library, and on the level Gravemind as you jailbreak the Marines. It comes as a murmur, but played backwards you get the intelligible message.
Personally, I have no doubt that the speaker is Gravemind. After all, considering Halo's vast biblical references, the Forerunner were God and Gravemind is the Devil. Lucifer was once an angel, but he railed against God and was cast into hell. Gravemind was the monument to all of the Forerunner's wrongdoings(or "sins", as he puts it), and he was the one who defied against God in the ultimate battle. We all know the Flood live to see death and destruction to wherever they plague. Rasping exasperatedly, he curses "The Light, The Light Cannot be Extinguished!"-perhaps he refers to Halo's fire. Meaning good still triumphed in the end if you please. And Gravemind did imply his suffering to be condemned to live forever as he contradicts Truth on High Charity through the P.A. Truth: "The parasite did not defeat the Forerunners(CLUE?), and they shall not defeat us.". Gravemind: "Arrogant creature, your deaths will be instantaneous where we shall suffer for the rest of infinitude".
What intrigues me is the Delta Halo ruins. Apparently there was a previous Flood outbreak there before and it's a wasteland littered with evidence of a previous battlefield. How did the Flood get onto Delta Halo in the first place? The location was not any containment facility. It seems the Forerunner simply contained the Flood where it was by constructing a makeshift wall, the Sentinel Wall. But the real question is, who survived to built the Delta Halo ruins as a cathedral tribute to the fallen? Surely Sentinels would not be that sentient as to build structures so similiar to human archeitect as to honor their former creators.
Gravemind can easily control machines and AI. Don't know how he does it. But he is a super-brain, containing all the knowledge of all the victims that went into him. Or perhaps he really is half machine and the Forerunner sought to create the ultimate war machine through a bioweapon hybrid. We see him controlling 2401PT("Now I shall talk..."), who, unlike 343GS, glows an eccentric red. Cortana can be just the same. As soon as Gravemind's tentacle came in touch with Cortana, he can control her. Or alternatively as someone said before, he can always take apart Cortana and modify her circuitry(the less believable theory).
[Edited on 5/27/2006]