- ROBERTO jh
- |
- Fabled Heroic Member
Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
The "evil" Precursors (since there appears to be those who didn't assimilate; possible allies?) have the best intentions, just not necessarily the best methods.
I think that is something most of us can agree on, the Flood is a terrible method.
And ruling who, exactly? As far as anyone knows, they only created and destroyed their own creations, but left everything else to run its own course. They were trying to build the perfect inheritors, and only they were subject to destruction if they were impure. Consider the longterm ramifications of an impure inheritor. The Forerunners were imperfect, and ruled peacefully with an iron fist. Whole civilizations were eradicated by their imperfect rule.
Well, if Forerunners and humans are made by the Precursors and both share common traits, same emotions, same viewpoints, then that leads me to believe that the Precursors share those as well. It's one thing to condemn the Forerunners for their ways, and you have to throw humans in there too since they did the same thing as well, but those actions had to come from somewhere, probably the creators.
As for ruling, well, everyone really. The Flood in the Forerunner-Flood War infected anything, Forerunners or not.
We can't bother trying to figure out how the Precursors think until there is a one on one scene with one where the conversation doesn't just go off into vague hints. They are by definition beyond us, as is their capabilities. The idea of creating a "perfect" race could be seen as a test in its self; that the race has to achieve perfection, but to do that they have to be capable of achieving it. Maybe actually building one right from the get go is impossible, but giving them the ability to achieve perfection through their own devices is. So they test them in various ways. They make sacrifices by the billions to test them, full on genocide in fact, but keep in mind that this is just one generation, in one galaxy at one point in time in a universe of infinite time and infinite galaxies and infinite generations to come after. The collateral damage might not seem like that big of a deal to gods who can understand just what is at stake long term.
What is one generation of chaos to billions of potential generations of order?
And the Precursors were trying to stop that by destroying them. They could be said to be evil only in that they don't give second chances at redemption, which is probably what the story of the Forerunners will be all about in the trilogy, but otherwise, they're trying to protect the many by destroying the imperfect few.
Something they never really seemed to care to fix.
Fixing the imperfections? If what I said above is true, that's impossible. They need to achieve the perfection themselves; they either have that capability, or they do not. The ones that do not can never be trusted with the Mantle. They've been given the capacity to build monumental technology by the Precursors and with that technology, the weapons to rule as the Forerunners did. They could not be trusted to exist.
They don't strike me as rulers, they're just trying to create the perfect guardians. Whatever state they're in, being transsentient, they don't seem to be willing to take direct action in the events of the universe, only to nurture it when absolutely necessary. Otherwise they use a proxy race, the inheritors. That can only be achieved by a race as pure as their goals.
But is such a goal of a pure race even possible? You could argue the Flood, but we just established that the Flood are still a brutal, method.
That is going to be the question in the Reclaimer Trilogy for sure; we know that humanity passed the test with the Flood the first time around. Now, whatever they do next may decide if we are that perfect race. The flaws with humanity and the flaws with the Forerunners are the same, but the difference between the two of us is that the Forerunners couldn't overcome their flaws. They in fact didn't recognize them until it was too late, even when Didact was warning everyone.
Ancient Man we know united against the Flood threat and willingly sacrificed two thirds of their entire population, as well as their civilization to defeat the Flood. Whether the cure worked or not--as we know it didn't--isn't the point. The point was the sacrifices we took in an attempt to beat them. The Forerunners, we know, broke out into civil unrest as well as wars amongst themselves because they couldn't unite, which only further eroded their civilization.
If the Flood is perfect because of the unity they represent, then by example mankind represents the Flood's benevolent opposite: Willingly united rather than being forced too. Meaning that the Precursors are correct in that only unity can bring peace, but, and this leads into my two factions theory, not all of them agree (ironic, now that I think about it).
The Primordial says that those who created the Forerunners fled, as not all were killed. It seems to me that the three races--Forerunners, Mankind, and the Flood--were created by seperate parties. We know the Primordial says that there were many "kinds" of Precursor, and that the humans and 'Runners were created in their image (according to the 'Runners), despite Primordial looking nothing like us.
Then this to me suggests two opposing ideals. One, the Primordial, who has little faith in complex, individualistic minded organisms such as mankind in ever being unified to nurture the universe, and so created the forceful method, the single minded Flood. The other party, the ones who fled, who created the Forerunners (and humanity, probably, considering our impossible likeness) who see potential in individuals also being unified.
Nothing but guess work of course, and a lot of it is likely wrong (indeed with things I may have not considered, but cant think of), but as I said:
We'll see.