- V101
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- Exalted Legendary Member
To play or not to play....
First question concerns the Flood. We all know the flood have over-run High Charity.
Firstly the Flood have their hands on another peice of high technology. High Charity is a masive ship that the Covenant built and use as one of there main bases (if not there main base). The fact that the Flood can over run such a large installation is proof of the strength the flood has. The very nature of the flood make it a hard enemy to fight. Brute force will generally not work against the flood.
So far we have the flood over running a major Covenant installation, the pillar of Autumn and taking over or infesting several forerunner installations (Halo rings). Halo 1 and the second Halo seems to be in a constant balance where the Sentinals are fighting with the flood but relatively keeping the flood in check. It seems the Flood are here to stay.
The Flood seem to know a hell of a lot of information now and are learning more and more and more as time goes on. The flood probably know the location of Earth via accessing the system on the pillar of Autumn. The flood probably know the Covenant home world/s via High Charity.
More disturbingly the flood seem to know more about the forerunners than we think. We all know the flood can take over technology as well as organic life. Basically the flood adapt to their environment remarkably well and when they infect a host the flood aquires all of the hosts knowledge.
In saying that maybe the flood have learnt a lot more than we know. The Gravemind seemed to know an aweful lot about the forerunners. Where did he learn it all? Obviously he learnt a bit through merely taking things along the way and maybe (very likely) the flood infected forerunners in the past as well.
The flood now have a functioning Hyperdrive (High Charity) and a very large ship to go with it. What would happen if they were in Hyperspace if the Halo's were activated. Activating the Halos would not eliminate all Flood as the first Halo's zone of destruction would not be effected as the first Halo is destroyed.
Hmm...This raises some interesting questions. Why activate the Halo rings if you are not going to clean out the whole galaxy?
Another question is in relation to the Covenant having a forerunner ship. How did they get it? Is it possible that some race was working with the forerunners in the past??? Maybe this could explain why the Covenant hate humans so much.
Imagine a time in the past when the Forerunners were thinking of activating the Halo's. Maybe some race (probably the same race as the prophets) was also present working as servants/allies of the Forerunners. Going by the Covenants ability to process technology my guess is that was their original role.
Now the flood became a serious threat and the Forerunners were forced to act. All manner of attempts to contain the flood failed. Humans were chosen as reclaimers and plans were set in place to activate the Halo rings. The Covenant race refused to be part of it seeing it as a sin to destroy all sentiant life and proclaimed they could contain the flood through other means. The forerunners saw no alternative than to activate the rings.
The humans obeyed the forerunners and activated the Halo rings. A few members of the Covenant race were on the Arc at the time of activation and survived. Somehow all of the forerunners were killed off. A few humans also survived on the Arc.
After the event the covenant race were outraged that such a sin had been committed. They blamed the humans for the sin against their masters (the humans could have said no). The humans saw there role merely as doing what the forerunners wished (what choice did they have). A war broke out.
The Sentinal type machines/race survived and possibly acted as sort of neutral third party.
The Covenant race was exiled with a ship.
Hence as the Covenant later formed and grew the hatred for humans was carried through as a certian fact. The humans were seen as the foulest of all enemies who killed of their own masters. In time the true nature of the war was forgotten but the hatred of humans remained. It is just noone can truly remember how it all started. Except perhaps the Prophets.
Of course at the time the Covenant race wasn't really the Covenant at the time. The Covenant we know today grew over many years and has many races as members. But you get the general idea of what I was saying. I was thinking it was possibly the Hierarc race that we know of as Prophets that were on the arc however who knows. Maybe it was a few races who were exiled together hence the collective nature of the Covenant (interesting thought).
This might also help explain why the Prophet of Truth took the forerunners ship back to Earth (the Arc). At the time a war was underway and he knew Earth was now taken over by the Covenant so if the rings were activated, most if not all, humans would die. A fair number of Covenant would survive and take back what was stolen from them last time when they were exiled
Just a bit of food for thought...
[Edited on 7/2/2006]