What are Prometheans actually?
Let me give a description: They are large (about 3m). They have limbs that float. In their back, they store a Watcher. One of their arms ends in a blade, the other one in a gun. They have a bulky back with wing-like shoulders. Their head or helmet looks similar to Megatron’s head. They have four arms. Two of them are rather stumpy. And they possess a humanoid skull.
So what are they actually? We know that the Promethean Knights are different from the Lancers. The Knights look much more aggressive and they have a light rifle: Promethean Knight
The Promethean Lancers have a more peaceful look on their helmet. They also possess a glowing crown on their back. We know so far that there are orange Promethean Lancers and blue Promethean Lancers. Despite their different colors, weapons, necks and helmets, the Lancers share the same basic body features with the Knights.
Now let us look at the skull. When I first saw this in the E3 gameplay, I thought it was a human inside that thing. That might sound strange to you. But let us look closer: We can see that it has little differences to a human skull. The first thing I notice are the huge eye holes. Over them are two lines, forming a pyramid. That are skull plates that are not connected. At the tip of that pyramid, we see a small hole. What we see is a very wide nose. The nostrils are pretty far from each other – something we DON’T see on human skulls. It is also visible that the teeth are VERY long.
So what is that? It is not human but humanoid. We know that the Forerunners were humanoid. And they were much taller than humans. So what if that thing is actually a Forerunner? Why I think that? Look at this picture. You can see that the limbs are floating and not connected to the body. But the small arms are connected as well as the head is. We know that Forerunners undergo MUTATIONS. And sometimes it is possible that failures occur during a Forerunner’s mutation. Look closer at the stumpy arms. These two arms are entire pieces, not floating like the bigger arms. They are slightly smaller than the Spartan’s arms and hands as you can see here
I believe that those things are Forerunners put into that huge armor. It’s like small aliens put into huge vessels. Not a very original idea – or an idea I like but it fits the appearance of the body. If the Forerunners inside the armors are dead or alive is another issue that I don’t want to pursue right now. But we can clearly see that their head, torso and stumpy arms are all connected. The Promethean Knights also turn to ashes when they are shot with the scattershot. The Spartans do so as well. The Watchers and Crawlers don’t, however. So my conclusion is that only organic lifeforms turn to yellow ash when they are shot with the Forerunner weapons. That would lead me to the assumption that the Promethean Knights are also partly organic.
A strange thing is that the Knight’s head appears to be in flames. Look at this picture. There are flames or orange smoke around his head. I really can’t say why that is so. The Lancers, however, don’t have smoke or flames around their head.
Coming to my second part. The Promethean Knight is able to translocate. It looks as if it enters slipspace for a brief moment. Do the Knights have slipspace drives in their bulky backs? Or are they doing that naturally? In Halo 3, we saw Forerunner Aggressor Sentinels doing a similar jump at the end of the level The Ark. If the Promethean are living creatures able to enter slipspace, the Ancient Evil might be something LIVING in Slipspace. I remember DecepticonCobra claiming that the Consciousness controlling the Graveminds could be inside the Slipspace.
