This thread is about stuff that is covered in the Forerunner Saga, so this might not make sense if you haven’t read those novels. Anyways, onto the discussion.
15 million years ago, the Precursors had determined that us, Humanity, would inherit the Mantle of Responsibility. The Forerunners would not be chosen. The Forerunners, out of anger and jealousy, attacked their creators, nearly wiping them out. The Primordial is then locked away. The big question is: how the hell could the Forerunners beat the Precursors? The Precursors were hundreds of millions more advanced than Forerunners (at the time of the Forerunner Saga), how could they nearly go extinct to a such incredibly inferior species? In Primordium, the Primordial reveals that the Precursors let the Forerunners win. Well, why would the Precursors let the Forerunners hunt them down? In Silentium, it’s revealed that the Precursors are not bound to the physical Universe:
> The Precursors lived in many shapes, flesh and spirit, primitave and advanced, spacefaring and locked to their worlds… Evolved over and over again, died away, were reborn, explored, and seeded many galaxies…
In Warfleet it says:
> Dreamers and makers whose minds transcended many realms…
> They had infinite forms, many voices, and singular purpose.
Simply put, the Precursors are beyond conventional biology and the physical Universe. They can live as biological beings or immaterial/incorporeal forms. Death is meaningless to them, as they never truly die. They live on a different plane of existence, that even the Forerunners could not comprehend. The biological bodies of the Precursors thus are merely vessels that the Precursors inhabit.Aside from not truly dying when being hunted by the Forerunners, there was another thing, curiosity, the Forerunners rebelling was something the Precursors had never seen from any of their created species Whether the other Precursors agree with the Primordial is unknown (hope we see other Precursors in future media). The Precursors are the species I am most interested in/fascinated by, and wanted to put this out there for anyone interested.
Likely they let the forerunners win to prove they were correct in choosing humanity over the forerunners. The forerunners wanted the mantle because they thought they could do a good job despite being highly prideful. Thus the precursors pretty much using a “you think you can do better, prove it,” scenario on a grand scale. We see this later when both species fight the flood.
Humanity was quick in going to war with the parasite, treating like a true threat to the galaxy. While to our knowledge they did not catalog or save species like the forerunners did, they were willing to lose a good chunk of population in an attempt to stop the flood with a “cure”. The forerunners on the other hand, treated the flood as a sickness, not a war threat and when things became to much, let other species fend for themselves as they withdrew behind their defenses. One species let their civilization be wiped out to stop the flood and save the galaxy, the other wiped out the galaxy to save it from the flood. Thus the precursors proved to the forerunners they were poor holders of the mantle.
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> Likely they let the forerunners win to prove they were correct in choosing humanity over the forerunners. The forerunners wanted the mantle because they thought they could do a good job despite being highly prideful. Thus the precursors pretty much using a “you think you can do better, prove it,” scenario on a grand scale. We see this later when both species fight the flood.
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> Humanity was quick in going to war with the parasite, treating like a true threat to the galaxy. While to our knowledge they did not catalog or save species like the forerunners did, they were willing to lose a good chunk of population in an attempt to stop the flood with a “cure”. The forerunners on the other hand, treated the flood as a sickness, not a war threat and when things became to much, let other species fend for themselves as they withdrew behind their defenses. One species let their civilization be wiped out to stop the flood and save the galaxy, the other wiped out the galaxy to save it from the flood. Thus the precursors proved to the forerunners they were poor holders of the mantle.
They also truly can’t die, and they’d simply re-emerge in some other form. The Forerunners were idiots thinking they could actually beat them.
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> They also truly can’t die, and they’d simply re-emerge in some other form. The Forerunners were idiots thinking they could actually beat them.
Well in fairness the precursors themselves are not perfect either. The group that was “wiped out” by the forerunners did go nuttier than a fruitcake and never were able to properly re-form their bodies. They also took out their vengeance too far in borderline wiping out the forerunners when they could have easily just trapped them on the greater ark. Allowing them to live, thus preserving the rules of the mantle yet allowing to watch what happens to the galaxy without them.
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> > They also truly can’t die, and they’d simply re-emerge in some other form. The Forerunners were idiots thinking they could actually beat them.
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> Well in fairness the precursors themselves are not perfect either. The group that was “wiped out” by the forerunners did go nuttier than a fruitcake and never were able to properly re-form their bodies. They also took out their vengeance too far in borderline wiping out the forerunners when they could have easily just trapped them on the greater ark. Allowing them to live, thus preserving the rules of the mantle yet allowing to watch what happens to the galaxy without them.
That’s defect Precursor dust that mutated. They’re more refined than any other species, hell they probably created the Universe.
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> That’s defect Precursor dust that mutated. They’re more refined than any other species, hell they probably created the Universe.
I massively doubt they created the universe, they don’t strike me as that powerful. Also at this time can they really be considered “refined”? We have only crazy and warped precursors to judge their species from. Would be like judging the forerunners on only the ur-didact without his backstory…
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> > That’s defect Precursor dust that mutated. They’re more refined than any other species, hell they probably created the Universe.
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> I massively doubt they created the universe, they don’t strike me as that powerful. Also at this time can they really be considered “refined”? We have only crazy and warped precursors to judge their species from. Would be like judging the forerunners on only the ur-didact without his backstory…
Have you heard the crazy theory that the sentience within the Domain might be a higher being that created the Universe?
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> > > That’s defect Precursor dust that mutated. They’re more refined than any other species, hell they probably created the Universe.
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> > I massively doubt they created the universe, they don’t strike me as that powerful. Also at this time can they really be considered “refined”? We have only crazy and warped precursors to judge their species from. Would be like judging the forerunners on only the ur-didact without his backstory…
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> Have you heard the crazy theory that the sentience within the Domain might be a higher being that created the Universe?
Yet it’s shown that the precursors made it, so I doubt the precursors are the biggest thing in the universe. We see with warfleet there were things they could not defeat, only contain.
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> > > > That’s defect Precursor dust that mutated. They’re more refined than any other species, hell they probably created the Universe.
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> > > I massively doubt they created the universe, they don’t strike me as that powerful. Also at this time can they really be considered “refined”? We have only crazy and warped precursors to judge their species from. Would be like judging the forerunners on only the ur-didact without his backstory…
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> > Have you heard the crazy theory that the sentience within the Domain might be a higher being that created the Universe?
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> Yet it’s shown that the precursors made it, so I doubt the precursors are the biggest thing in the universe. We see with warfleet there were things they could not defeat, only contain.
Some people theorize that the Domain isn’t a network, but a dimension. The theory says that a being even higher than the Precursors created the Universe, and resides within the Domain. It goes onto to say this being founded the Mantle. This doesn’t make sense, as it’s confirmed that the Precursors started the Mantle. While I think it’s an interesting idea, I highly doubt that’s the case.
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> > That’s defect Precursor dust that mutated. They’re more refined than any other species, hell they probably created the Universe.
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> I massively doubt they created the universe, they don’t strike me as that powerful. Also at this time can they really be considered “refined”? We have only crazy and warped precursors to judge their species from. Would be like judging the forerunners on only the ur-didact without his backstory…
The Precursors gathered most of their knowledge since before the stars existed. That puts them first existing near the beginning of the universe at least give or take a few hundred million years between the Big Bang and the first star formation. That’s a time when science and physics tells us no intelligent life or indeed any form of intelligence should be able to exist in the cosmos. And yet most of the Precursors’ knowledge(at least 100 billion years worth which far predates the current estimated age of the universe) comes from that time. I think considering these factors and with their reality-screwing power(Nueral Physics basically tells physics to f*ck off) that they are likely responsible for the universe’s creation. As for the threats they couldn’t destroy - they could very well be rogue Precursors or perhaps another species with rival power to them or at least enough to consider a threat to themselves or the universe hence them being contained in “timeless crystallized reality”. Maybe there are other Lovecraftian horrors out there besides them.
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> > > That’s defect Precursor dust that mutated. They’re more refined than any other species, hell they probably created the Universe.
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> > I massively doubt they created the universe, they don’t strike me as that powerful. Also at this time can they really be considered “refined”? We have only crazy and warped precursors to judge their species from. Would be like judging the forerunners on only the ur-didact without his backstory…
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> As for the threats they couldn’t destroy - they could very well be rogue Precursors or perhaps another species with rival power to them or at least enough to consider a threat to themselves or the universe hence them being contained in “timeless crystallized reality”. Maybe there are other Lovecraftian horrors out there besides them.
This is one thing that I find odd on the precursors. Why didn’t the flood suffer the same fate? At their height they even threatened the fabric of space itself.
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> > > > That’s defect Precursor dust that mutated. They’re more refined than any other species, hell they probably created the Universe.
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> > > I massively doubt they created the universe, they don’t strike me as that powerful. Also at this time can they really be considered “refined”? We have only crazy and warped precursors to judge their species from. Would be like judging the forerunners on only the ur-didact without his backstory…
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> > As for the threats they couldn’t destroy - they could very well be rogue Precursors or perhaps another species with rival power to them or at least enough to consider a threat to themselves or the universe hence them being contained in “timeless crystallized reality”. Maybe there are other Lovecraftian horrors out there besides them.
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> This is one thing that I find odd on the precursors. Why didn’t the flood suffer the same fate? At their height they even threatened the fabric of space itself.
Most Precursors became Flood. And any remaining Precursors have sunk into “unreachable depths” since then whatever that means. As far as we know, any remaining Precursors if they still exist are gone from our reality. Which cpuld allow these previously mentioned threats to be freed by unknowing species like humans and Covenant or the Created.