I know I have told many people to look for answers on Halopedia, but I am currently looking through it and I am tired so I might miss something.
Since the Precursors created the Domain (or Organon if you prefer), and some Precursors would later become the Flood, do you think they gained access to the Domain and that the Domain itself is the Flood’s collective hive mind but to a certain degree? I have seen many people theorizing that Domana (Domain Cortana) is not rampant but suffering from the Logic plague and that the Logic plague is a favourite weapon of the Graveminds. We all know what hive minds are, they are pheromones ejected from individual members of the hive to control others and since I doubt a Graveminds pheromone can reach to the other side of the galaxy, I would theorize that all the Flood has access to their own section of the Domain so they can store knowledge and the Graveminds can command their minions which would make some sense as to what happened to the Flood when the Rings fired.
Thoughts?
Blame Viridian Eagle, TRUe REDEMPTI0N, and Samthemanm117 for this theory.
Honestly when I was reading cryptum when it first came out, my early thoughts were the graveminds were based on the domain 
the descriptions of the domain’s foundations is really reminiscent of what cortana experienced in Human Weakness when interfacing with the gravemind.
It would make more sense if it was so.
I shared that theory. Right up until Sillentium, when the Organon vanishes after the Halos fire. If the Organon’s gone, how does the Gravemind’s hive mind carry on?
And just to clarify, a piece of mission intel seemed to confirm that the Organon and the Domain aren’t one and the same, but rather that the Organon was essential to its structure (and without it the Domain lost a LOT of data and Forerunner essences).
Actually the Domain and the Organon are the same thing, we just do not know much about how the Domain survived the Halo firing, but yes it lost a lot of “data”.
I wrote about this not too long ago. We learn in Silentium that the Domain is apparently alive when it opens itself and testifies to the Senior Juridical. Despite this apparent intelligence it appears to be missing for some reason in Halo 5, but there could possibly be an explanation for why. The Flood is controlled by a central intelligence we call a Gravemind, but the Flood can’t form a Gravemind until it has collected enough intelligence and biomass to grow. The digital Domain could potentially work in a similar way. Intelligent lifeforms will cross over into the Domain and when it has collected enough of them it will form it’s own compound mind. This could have been why it was intelligent in the past and may have been the intelligence which reached out to Bornstellar when he first made contact with the Domain. After all these years it’s open again, but it might not have enough minds to form a central intelligence This could potentially be why Cortana appears to be in control of it.
I’ve started thinking of the Flood as an organic Domain, which serves as an opposite to the digital Domain. The Forerunner had hoped that the Composers would bridge the gap between these two worlds, however the Librarian said that life forms who were digitized would sour and they couldn’t be returned to organic form because it only created abominations. What if that’s what the Flood turned out to be? The Primordial could have been an example of a digitized essence, or essences, that attempted to return to organic form only to return as an abomination. This is why the Flood is called the “dead reincarnated” because they’re essentially the essences of “dead” Precursors who have attempted to return to an organic form and returned as mutated abominations.
I believe that a Gravemind is an individual being, specifically that of a Precursor intelligence. So if we were to say 10 Precursors dissolved themselves into a powdery substance and then that substance formed the Flood. Now let’s say that the Flood then forms 10 different Graveminds. I believe that those 10 Graveminds would be the minds of those 10 original Precursors now reborn as these terrible abominations. That’s why the Gravemind identified itself as “we” during the Forerunner-Flood War and “I” during the last months of the Human-Covenant War. It’s because their were multiple Graveminds working together 100,000 years ago but there was only the one formed in the modern era and it identified itself as an individual.
Cortana may very well serve as the basis for the new Domain’s compound mind, just as the Precursors serve as the central intelligences for the Flood. I am curious to know if Precursor minds remain within the Domain. If they do and they are like the Flood in the way they require a certain number of intelligences in order to form, then it’s possible they will return once enough AI have voluntarily entered the Domain. Perhaps the intelligence from Silentium will return and usurp Cortana? Or maybe she really does serve as the basis for this new intelligence and Cortana is now like a digital Gravemind. She’s a ghost with a new body who wishes to impose her will on the galaxy and will consume those who resist her.
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> I shared that theory. Right up until Sillentium, when the Organon vanishes after the Halos fire. If the Organon’s gone, how does the Gravemind’s hive mind carry on?
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> And just to clarify, a piece of mission intel seemed to confirm that the Organon and the Domain aren’t one and the same, but rather that the Organon was essential to its structure (and without it the Domain lost a LOT of data and Forerunner essences).
Because the Precursors are not bound by the Organon, the Organon was just something they created as a housing for the Domain, most likely. The Domain is a Precursor (because differentiating what is and isn’t a Precursor is essentially irrelevant given their timeless nature) but not all Precursors would be in any way harmed by the destruction of the Organon.
They’re a race of 100billion year old timeless gods unbound by space and time, destroying one of their toys won’t do much to them.
I wish we can see the explaination behind the connection between the Flood and Domain.
That’s the only way i can see the GraveMind commanding its Flood troops from so far away is by using the Domain…