> 2533274865500640;13:
> The Didact wasn’t corrupted in anyway.
Yes, actually he was. Silentium made this very clear.
Halo Silentium
String 24, Page 206
CATALOG: You removed him from the presence of the Gravemind?
MENDICANT BIAS: Not me. The Gravemind.
CATALOG: Why was the Didact released?
MENDICANT BIAS: I cannot know for certain, but the Gravemind never acts without intent. There’s apparently a larger game to be played, a sharply twisted game of revenge, for which my co-creator has been preserved.
Halo Silentium
String 26, Page 225 - 226
“Humans drowned out entire civilizations with the Flood,’ he says. ‘They brought this horrific parasite to our people. Had we acted quicker, had we taken what was rightfully ours, we could have cut off the infection at its source. Know this: the universe will now be turned star by star, world by world, organism by living thing, into even more of a tortured mockery than it already is. Look what it’s done to me!’ He spreads wide his powerful arms, bowing his head, as if opening to her gentle fingers, her probing, deep-feeling examination.
Instinctively, she reaches toward him - but holds back at the last instant. He notes her reticence; it may be the final breaking strain on thousands of years of love.
‘Everything it touches is afflicted with madness,’ he cries out. 'It has touched me. I am myself mad!”
Halo Silentium
String 30, Page 256
“I felt their touch, their love. And yet, they were fading. The Domain is filled with sadness. A deep shadow has fallen over everything Forerunner. When I was pulled up from all that, pulled out of the Cryptum and revived… I couldn’t remember. But now I do - in part. Horror brought it back. The Gravemind returned it to me. It forced me to listen.’
My husband swiftly removes his hand from mine and stands to summon his armor, stretching to allow it to surround him. 'I need to fight against what it told me, what it has done to me, to all of us. I need to fight with all of my might and will, and everything I can gather… every weapon and resource. But I have been undercut from the very beginning by that Manipular, Wife. The worst thing I’ve ever done was imprint him. And so, forgive me in advance for what I mist do. And know why I do it.”
Halo Silentium
String 30, Page 257
“I can’t bear the thought of the loss of all my specimens, of the greatest concentration of our lifelong efforts, of all our work!
‘How can we repopulate the galaxy if we lose everything here?’ I cry.
The Didact’s look is strangely sly. Devious, as if he has a delicious joke he wishes to tell, but not yet. An expression I’ve never seen before. Horror compounds upon horror.
‘After I finish my task, I will depart in Mantle’s Approach,’ he says.
My mind races. I can expect no assistance from the Didact, that much is obvious.”
Halo Silentium
String 34, Page 287 - 289
"He was interrogated by a Gravemind,’ I say.
‘I know that much.’
‘If you were Gravemind, such an amalgam of ancient memory, Forerunner memory and experience - how would you forge a weapon to strike at the center of Forerunner defenses?’
She narrows her eyes severely. I have struck a strong chord- and a sour one. Her nostrils compress, as if she does not want to breathe the same air as me. But she folds her arms and continues to listen.
‘An honorable and courageous leader is delivered unexpectedly into your control,’ I say, ‘a leader whose return might bring hope and renewed strength to the Forerunner exumene.’
‘And?’
‘And yet his return has brought nothing but sorrow and horrific destruction, not only to his own rate, but now to the humans as well. He’s become a foolish pawn in a dark game of revenge that began long ago.’
‘The Primordial,’ Endurance says.
‘The Primordial. An experience so traumatic he kept the facts hidden from me for ten thousand years. Such a creature, with such a dark brilliance, would play upon his oldest fears, twist emotions made fragile during a lifetime of war and hardship and politics. Twist, intensify - and distort them.’
‘Prometheans have for hundreds of thousands of years been proofed against that sort of pressure,’ Endurance says. ‘Torture has never broken one of our rank.’
‘They have no training against this adversary. No armor or protection against the heirs of those who created us. The Didact has been subjected to the examination of something so very close to a god… one related to those we assumed had passed the Mantle to us, but most definitely have not.’