When the Timeless One said at the end of Primordium “We are the Flood, there is no difference.” Now when he said this I had my doubts. So the question to you guys is, are the Precursors one in the same with the Flood, or that the Timeless One was lying and was just a Gravemind tricking others and that the true Precursors are still around and will return?
There was also the part about the beast being apparently made up of rotting bodies…precursor bodies perhaps?
Every one of the TOs answers was very cryptic.
It’s impossible to say.
hey wazooty, nice pic of cortana!!!
I think he meant that while both species are unrelated; they both have developed a shared consciousness. both of them are presumably pure biological, that is they don’t have technology as such. the precursors use neural physics to bend the world around them. the flood utilizes captured technology. neither of them actually make technology.
so in this sense; the flood and the precursors are the pretty much the same thing(except that the precursors can manipulate the world around them using their minds, while the flood manipulates the world physically).
i believe that the flood and the precursers are different beings. it is my belief that the flood infected some of the remaining precursurs either during or after the Forerunners war. these precursers that were consumed by the flood could have been ones that had left that know universe and were infected at some other region of space (the flood were suppose to have been discovered on ships that came from outside the galaxy and found by the humans).
the absorption of these precursers by the flood would have transfered all their knowledge to the flood. this would allow the gravemind, or graveminds to manipulate the knowledge and plans of the precursers for their own purposes.
the flood then would then choose to “test” the forerunners and then the humans, as the precursers might have done. the description of the “timeless” one that was in the time lock was of one being. it did not have the later apperance that the TO did at the end of Primordium. the TO at the end of primordium resembled a gravemind- it had multiple body parts.
it is also possible that the flood absorbed the TO after the firing of the first halo ring around charum hakkor.
john
The TO speaks in riddles about everything (i will paraphrase in quotes b/c i don’t have the book on me to quote it). He says that “I am the last”, now he doesn’t specify if the precusors are somewhere else and could return, that is a mystory. As for the flood, he says (through more riddals) that pretty much the flood is their way of striking back at the Forunners from the grave…like that plasma nade that you throw just before you die that the entire opposing team ends up walking over and giving you an Extermination from the grave. The Precursors were creators of life and (in educated theory) developed the flood as a weapon to devour the Forerunners to exact revenge for wiping them out, or running them off, or whatever…their way of getting back. The Precusors themselves were in no way flood seeing how the TO is described to be more scorpion like (large, 4 arms, 2 legs, tale, miss-shaped head). They don’t discribe him as having extruding bone whips as many Flood combat forms do, or being gigantically bulbas like the carrier forms, or anywhere in between as all known Flood forms appear.
> The TO speaks in riddles about everything (i will paraphrase in quotes b/c i don’t have the book on me to quote it). He says that “I am the last”, now he doesn’t specify if the precusors are somewhere else and could return, that is a mystory. As for the flood, he says (through more riddals) that pretty much the flood is their way of striking back at the Forunners from the grave…like that plasma nade that you throw just before you die that the entire opposing team ends up walking over and giving you an Extermination from the grave. The Precursors were creators of life and (in educated theory) developed the flood as a weapon to devour the Forerunners to exact revenge for wiping them out, or running them off, or whatever…their way of getting back. The Precusors themselves were in no way flood seeing how the TO is described to be more scorpion like (large, 4 arms, 2 legs, tale, miss-shaped head). They don’t discribe him as having extruding bone whips as many Flood combat forms do, or being gigantically bulbas like the carrier forms, or anywhere in between as all known Flood forms appear.
isn’t he a prisoner anyway? I mean no one should take the words of a prisoner seriously. the TO escaped didn’t he? so he is probably out there somewhere laughing his buttocks off at the mess the galaxy is in. thats a thought, what is happening at the other side of the galaxy with all the other left over forerunner tech?
Im pretty sure the TO was killed at the end of primordial. If im not mistaken, they put TO in the opposite of a time stasis machine, and made him age millions of years in secs…
The Timeless One is indeed dead, crumbled to dust after being artificially aged millions of years. I have a theory that the Flood is essentially the conglomerate form of all life, created by the Precursors. Perhaps some sort of figurative clay that they shaped different species from. When they finished with a species (“sweetness”; it would seem the Precursors enjoyed literally playing God), they would just roll it back up into the ball of clay and start anew (“unity and wisdom”). Eventually when the Forerunners were created, they fought back to avoid being erased. The Precursors, now virtually wiped out, left the Flood, with its intention of reclaiming all the life in the universe. This theory explains a lot of things, including Gravemind’s iconic “I am a monument to all your sins” line, as well as why the Gravemind is simply incapable of comprehending the reason to why living creatures fight to avoid being assimilated.
Just a theory.
I remember in a recent Halo 4 interview, Frank O’Connor mentioned that a Gravemind is not the last evoluationary phase of the Flood, and that future Halo media will show the further phases in the future. I think the the Primordial is a Flood, but much more than just a Gravemind that we think of in Halo 2/3.
The Precursors may have been Graveminds that evolved out of the Flood (as the Flood consumed knowledge, so the Graveminds were born) and, over a long period of time, built a civilization.
Perhaps the Flood are to Precursors what apes are to humans. So, ti goes like this: Flood Supercell > Flood infected hosts > Gravemind > Precursor. This process likely happened over billions of years. They had become very, very advanced (Tier 0), and used the Flood to erase troublesome species.
Its clear that the Precursors were far more evolved than the Gravemind; all GM does is consume and assimilate, it builds nothing and has no real civilization. Even with all the knowledge it acquires, GM is a very basic creature. The Precursors had likely evolved from GMs to the point of being totally different.
What the Precursors may have done is sent the most primitive form of themselves back into the Galaxy as revenge. Thus, they would erase the Forerunners as they had done those others who did not know their place.
> The Precursors may have been Graveminds that evolved out of the Flood (as the Flood consumed knowledge, so the Graveminds were born) and, over a long period of time, built a civilization.
>
> Perhaps the Flood are to Precursors what apes are to humans. So, ti goes like this: Flood Supercell > Flood infected hosts > Gravemind > Precursor. This process likely happened over billions of years. They had become very, very advanced (Tier 0), and used the Flood to erase troublesome species.
>
> Its clear that the Precursors were far more evolved than the Gravemind; all GM does is consume and assimilate, it builds nothing and has no real civilization. Even with all the knowledge it acquires, GM is a very basic creature. The Precursors had likely evolved from GMs to the point of being totally different.
>
> What the Precursors may have done is sent the most primitive form of themselves back into the Galaxy as revenge. Thus, they would erase the Forerunners as they had done those others who did not know their place.
This is how I take it