Precursors vs. Flood

Community Halo Universe
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The following is a collection of comments on quotes from the Greg Bear books “Cryptum” and “Primordium”. There’s a theory included I myself find hard to believe, because it changes something we’ve assumed to be a main pillar of the Halo Univere’s history.

ABOUT THE PRIMORDIAL, THE FLOOD AND ANCIENT FORERUNNER HISTORY:

from Cryptum:

> “Nobody knows its origins, but what was confined here terrified all who saw it. <mark>Millions of years ago</mark>, it was confined in a stasis capsule and buried thousands of meters below the surface.”
>
> “It predated the humans who excavated it. It <mark>predated the Flood</mark>.”
>
> “A Halo released something that was <mark>kept by both Precursors and humans</mark> at
> Charum Hakkor.”
>
> “A <mark>cage built by Precursors</mark>, maintained and strengthened by humans before our
> war with them,”
>
> “Most humans came to believe that the captive was an ancient aberration and had
> been <mark>imprisoned by the Precursors</mark> for just cause,”
>
> "<mark>Was this actually a Precursor, as the humans had at first</mark>
> <mark>believed?</mark> Or was it something manufactured by Precursors—possibly a strange,
> distorted sibling to both Forerunners and humans?

from Primordium:

> “At that time, we did not know — though <mark>some of us suspected</mark> —
> that the Primordial was itself one of the Precursors, perhaps the last
> Precursor…”
>
> “You told me you were the last Precursor. How can you be the last of anything? <mark>I see now that you are nothing more than a mash-up of old victims infected by the Flood</mark>. A Gravemind.”

The Timeless Once/Prisoner/Captive/Primordial is old, dating back into the Precursor days. Initially, humanity assumed that it was a, or even the last Precusor - but after communicating with him that belief changed to the Timeless One being a prisoner of the Precursors.
Now, this doesn’t mean that it can’t be a Precursor (a lot of human inmates in our prisons, right?), but ancient humanity seems to have come to doubt that the TO really was an original Precursor.
The fact that it was imprisoned by Precursors is never contested by the Forerunners, who surely would have noticed the stasis capsule to be of their own work and not the Precursor’s (this said, because I’ve read about the Prisoner being found in Forerunner ruins, don’t remember where - but it isn’t mentioned by Yprin Yprikushma in Primordium).

Due to the TO’s line “There is no difference,” it is commonly assumed that the Flood and the Precursors are one and the same, either always were or evolved over time from P->F. However, there is another possibility:
The TO could’ve left one single word out: “anymore” = “There is no difference anymore”.

I’m talking about the Precursors being victims of the Flood. This makes a lot more sense regarding the TO being imprisoned and hidden in a planetary crust. I can see no reason why “flood-friendly Precursors” would’ve done something like that. Locked inside a stasis field with “no means of communication” and very well hidden on a “lost cinder of a world” (both facts mentioned in Primordium by Yprikushma) it wouldn’t make a good “mole” or “sleeper cell”, further implying that the TO wasn’t left back by his friends.

from Primordium:

> “Look around you! The Primordial is here. The Shaping Sickness is here! Forerunners are dying — but we live on! And that is what <mark>the Primordial promised</mark>!”
> "Besides, the Primordial gave us information, and with it, we saved billions of human lives.”
> (Yprikushma)

Yprikushma’s words indicate that the TO told her something similar to what he tells the Didact next. Forerunners will fall, humanity will rise. She also seems to have made some sort of deal with the TO, whether she knew it or was tricked into. I believe said information, that saved billions, concerned the “cure”, which included the sacrifice of 1/3 of the human population.

from Primordium:

> “Or are you after all only an imitation of a Precursor, a puppet — a reanimated corpse? Are all the Precursors gone—or is it that the Flood will make new Precursors?”
> "Those who created you were defied and hunted,” the Captive said. “Most were extinguished. A few fled beyond your reach. Creation continued.”
> […]
> “Is that to be our punishment?” the Didact asked, his tone subdued—dangerous.
> “<mark>It is the way of those who seek out the truth of the Mantle</mark>. Humans will rise again in arrogance and defiance. The Flood will return when they are ripe—and bring them unity.”

Note how the TO refers to the creators as “Those” and not “we” or “us”. This doesn’t prove anything, but it also isn’t a direct counter to the Didacts accusations.
“The way of those who seek out the TRUTH of the Mantle.” - what is the way of those who don’t seek out the TRUTH?
The Flood will return to bring unity. He says this after mentioning that it hasn’t been decided yet whether or not humanity will fail like the Forerunners. So the Flood will come back for humanity anyway, but then what are the consequences of passing the test, or failing?
The latter is probably what happened to the Forerunners, complete eradication - if we assume that “seeking the truth” goes along with failing. But then: where lies the difference to “unity” that he already promised to be humanity’s fate?

Before I continue, first let’s remember that the Forerunners have a very vague memory of their war with the Precursors, they remember no details at all.
In Cryptum, Bornstellar calls the fight against the Precursors a “sin”, “shameful”. According to him the Precursors left because the Forerunners offended them.
In Primordium the Didact refers to the Precursors as “monsters”, which the Forerunners had to fight, in order to survive.

Those are two very different perceptions of common lore, but as i mentioned in previous posts, the Forerunner-Precursor History, including the definition of the Mantle resembles much more a religious cult than anything else, hence different believes within one system are possible (like catholics and heretics… ehm, protestants).
So let’s take both approaches serious, but not word for word: the core message would be Forerunners went to war against a threat and it was shameful.
This leads me back to the Precursors vs. Flood theory:

The Flood likes to play mindgames. In the games a Gravemind uses MC and the Arbiter to fight a common enemy (343 GS) and from what Yprikushma tells us the Primordial messed with ancient humanity. So why not mess with the Forerunners to trick them into assisting the Flood getting rid of the Precursors. If the Precursors left behind some Gei in Forerunners (mentioned around the same time as the “shame” in Cryptum), this could explain the feeling of shame in Forerunners like Bornstellar.

Additionally, how likely is it that one species (Tier 1-2) alone can win a war (not: resist occupation, but wipe out the superior enemy) against a Tier 0 species like the Precursors? I always had doubts, further fueled by the lack of information the Forerunners carried over the eons of time. The loss of a library in a supernova alone is a bad excuse - there’s more to this.

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Interesting thinking, I will reply more fully later if I have time, one thing comes to mind though:

> "Those who created you were defied and hunted,” the Captive said. “Most were extinguished. A few fled beyond your reach. Creation continued.”

Hunted by who?

“A few fled beyond your reach” doesn’t need to imply the Forerunner were the main ones doing the hunting, just that the Forerunner couldn’t follow.

As to the tiers, technological development is more a rock-face than a ladder, there are different routes to the same capabilities, it is plausible that the Forerunner could have better millitary technology than the Precursors, if that’s what they focused on.

The Flood, of course, adopts whatever tech ‘level’ it can from it’s victims.

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> Interesting thinking, I will reply more fully later if I have time, one thing comes to mind though:
>
>
> > "Those who created you were defied and hunted,” the Captive said. “Most were extinguished. A few fled beyond your reach. Creation continued.”
>
> Hunted by who?
>
> “A few fled beyond your reach” doesn’t need to imply the Forerunner were the main ones doing the hunting, just that the Forerunner couldn’t follow.

my point exactly.

> As to the tiers, technological development is more a rock-face than a ladder, there are different routes to the same capabilities, it is plausible that the Forerunner could have better millitary technology than the Precursors, if that’s what they focused on.

it is possible, but not plausible, IMHO. it simply doesn’t fit the usual description of the Precursors as “Uber-species”.

> The Flood, of course, adopts whatever tech ‘level’ it can from it’s victims.

= a much better canditate for bringing down the precursors than the Forerunners.

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My head hurts, I love Halo, and I wish to know as much as I can… But this is… Too much, I haven’t even read the books xd. But what I was able to understand is, that there is some sort of creature, not precursor, not flood or human? than what is it?

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> My head hurts, I love Halo, and I wish to know as much as I can… But this is… Too much, I haven’t even read the books xd. But what I was able to understand is, that there is some sort of creature, not precursor, not flood or human? than what is it?

the Timeless One, or Captive, aka Primordial or Prisoner of Charum Hakkor is a creature ancient humanity found on some planet in the galaxy’s back yard during the Human-Flood war.
it was buried deep in the planet’s crust, inside a Precursor “cage”. humans then transported it to their capital - Charum Hakkor - where they began questioning him. after one of these interrogation sessions a large number of humans commited suicide, due to what the prisoner said. that’s when humanity locked him up even more until the Forerunners seized the planet and the Didact questioned the prisoner, getting the “i am the last precursor” reply.
what happens in the next 10,000 years is unclear, but the prisoner stays in his cell until the test-firing of a Halo destroys the prison and sets the Timeless One free. He gets onboard of the Halo and starts experimenting with humans until Forerunners capture him again and the Didact visits him a second time. this time he realizes that the “Precursor” is made up from multiple bodies = a gravemind (and we learn that an ancient human admiral made the same observation back in his days).

he IS Flood, some sort of gravemind or other highly evolved flood “unit”, at least the name “Primordial” hints to that.
the big question is: is he also Precursor, as he once claimed?

while we’re at it: the looks of the TO changes from Cryptum to Primordium:

from Cryptum:

> The cell contained, in temporal suspension, a genuine monster: a large creature with an overall anatomy like a grossly misshapen human, though possessed of <mark>four upper limbs</mark>, <mark>two degenerate legs</mark>, and an almost indescribably ugly head—a head shaped remarkably like that of an ancient arthropod seeded long ago on a number of planets, presumably by the Precursors, and known to some as a eurypterid. A sea scorpion.

from Primordium:

> Now I saw, beneath the startling and ugly-beautiful head, a thick, grossly fat torso mostly concealed behind <mark>six or more drawn-up legs</mark>, bunched together like sticks and embraced by <mark>two shriveled yet still impressive arms</mark>—arms with multiple joints, cased in wrinkled, leathery skin. The skin was covered with what resembled sweat but was actually a glassy, coruscating solid, like frozen dew.

where did the second pair of arms go and why has it grown additional legs?
what could this change of shape possibly mean?

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On the TO. He is definitely a gravemind, but beyond a gravemind. When enough flood biomass forms together they reach a new stage I think. Just my theory.

Listen at about 3.20 on here

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> On the TO. He is definitely a gravemind, but beyond a gravemind. When enough flood biomass forms together they reach a new stage I think. Just my theory.
>
> Listen at about 3.20 on here
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPeMxbvCjYo

that’s what i’m thinking too. and thanks for the link.

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So this thread got me thinking about the supposed Forerunner-Precursor war, and how much of it doesn’t quite… fit…

I’m going to go way out into speculation territory and outline a little hypothesis
I’ve come up with here following on from the thoughts everyone else has been posting.

Gonna make a few assumptions:
The Forerunner are correct when they say that themselves and Humanity were created by Precursors.
Precursors as a race were not particularly numerous.
Precursors are not inherently evil.
Not all Precursors share the same goals.
The Flood is a Precursor creation too.
The Gravemind/Primordial is far from sane.
The Forerunner had reason not to want to remember much of that time.
Forerunner psychology when it comes to war/combat has not changed much. (A slow rise to shameful, absolute, fury. oblitteration of the enemy’s ability to ever respond.)
The Forerunner understanding of the ‘Mantle’ does actually come from a Precursor concept.

Let’s assume that the galaxy as it was in the time of the Precursors wasn’t too dissimilar to that which we see during the Forerunner reign, it has many species, but little interspecies cooperation, and a lot of conflict based on territorial, racial, and ideological differences.
The Precursors, as the most technologically advanced race (or group), feel a sense of responsibility to the other races, and want to reduce all this pointless conflict. Since diplomacy from an outside source is often not well recieved (especially if the hostile entities are following a classical game-theory approach) the Precursors conclude that the most efficient method of protecting the races in the galaxy from genociding each other is through force of arms, to enforce a galactic equivalent of the Pax Romana essentially.

The Precursors however, are not skilled in the arts of war, they have been top-dog for so long they hardly ever need to fight, they are scientists, philosophers, and engineers, not warriors. They are also outnumbered. The solution seems obvious, and so they create a new sentient race, one that will have a great desire for peace but be ruthless and unwavering in their duty in times of war. They will be long lived with the ability to share and pass on knowledge, as well as the capability to assume different forms to better optimise themselves for their designated role.
They name this race the Forerunner, as it is through them that the future of the galaxy will be secured. The Precursors aren’t evil enough to enslave their new servants however, instead being content to empress upon them the importance of Precursor guardianship over the galaxy, and the rightoeusness of their actions.
The Mantle.
However, not all Precursors agree on this ‘unity through threat of violence’ plan, and a small group (radicals perhaps?) tries to come up with a new plan, one that will bring true unity, not just oppressed obedience.

It goes spectacularly wrong.

The Flood, the Shaping Sickness, is born.

It’s first victims are it’s creators, those Precursors that designed it. The process breaks them, twists their minds as much as their bodies, the Gravemind that forms believes itself to be a precursor, but it’s just a dark madness-tinged shadow of what they once were.

The Flood’s initial spread is violent and quick, wiping out the bulk of the Precursor population, as well as many others in it’s drive to ‘unify’ the galaxy.

In desperation the surviving Precursors cede control of much of their most advanced weaponry to their Forerunner soldiers, there is a problem however, the Forerunner are just as susceptable to infection as everyone else. A second warrior race is hastily created, with a potential shot at immunity, Humanity.

The Forerunner’s faith in the Precursors is further shaken, not only did they unleash the Flood upon the galaxy, they have now crafted a seemingly inferior replacement to the Forerunner themselves. Forerunner and Ancient Human forces manage to destroy/eradicate most of the Flood. The Precursor ‘Gravemind(s)’ are captured and imprisoned, the Primordial is one such Mind. Then the Forerunner move on to the next threat to galactic peace. The surviving Precursors.

At some point during this war there may have been an attempt to combine Forerunners and Humans at a genetic level, Primordium hints at it when we get a glimpse into the Primordial’s mind.

Regardless;
The Forerunner assume the Mantle, deeming the Precursors unfit to hold it.
The Precursor survivours respond by trying to reassert control.
The Forerunner respond to this percieved attack in the only way that makes sense to them, they drive the Precursors into exile or kill them.
The failure of the ones they thought so highly of, and their deep shame at wiping them out results in the incident being struck from the records. A proud race like the Forerunner would likely not want to remember their most shameful failures.
The fact that the Domain sometimes changes information or loses it does not help.

Humanity also has a claim to the Mantle, but lack the Forerunner’s technological and millitary reserves, the Humans are reduced and resettled elsewhere by the Forerunner, hence the confusion about Humanity’s actual homeworld. Vague memories of that time remain, leading to Humanity claiming the Mantle later on.

The Flood, on the other hand, while twisted and sadistic, still thinks it’s doing everyone a favour by bringing them unity, and if they will not hear that message it will show it to you… It’s not entirely sane, it has a god complex, may think it’s directly a continuation of the Precursors it was before, and while it has a massive intellect it is emotionally stunted. Primordium describes it as a child, and in many ways it is, a child pulling the wings off flies, if it were part of a society it would be classed as sociopathic. It is capable of inflicting horrible tortures and horrors on others because it doesn’t see it as wrong. Worse, it’s mind is sufficiently twisted that it gets pleasure from the suffering of others. The ancient Humans were correct, it is an aberration of the thing it was intended to be.

That’s my random musings for the day, a little scenario I was running through in my head, I think it fits with a lot of what we know, but feel free to tear it apart, its conjecture. :slight_smile:

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This is all I suspected…great great thread!

With Love,
Your Mom,
~AnonomissX~

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This thread makes me extremely excited for Halo 4!! :smiley:

> The Flood, on the other hand, while twisted and sadistic, still thinks it’s doing everyone a favour by bringing them unity, and if they will not hear that message it will show it to you… It’s not entirely sane, it has a god complex, may think it’s directly a continuation of the Precursors it was before, and while it has a massive intellect it is emotionally stunted. Primordium describes it as a child, and in many ways it is, a child pulling the wings off flies, if it were part of a society it would be classed as sociopathic. It is capable of inflicting horrible tortures and horrors on others because it doesn’t see it as wrong. Worse, it’s mind is sufficiently twisted that it gets pleasure from the suffering of others. The ancient Humans were correct, it is an aberration of the thing it was intended to be.

Spot. On. That is exactly how I view the Flood. Splendid read!

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Maybe the flood came across the precursors, absorbed them, thought they were such a perfect race that they now try to…recreate them in their own image.

Anyways, great post Raindoc.