Welcome to the Halo Lore Series Remastered.
In this episode, we will focus on the Precursors and the reason for their existence within the Halo universe, their origins and the impact on the universe itself.
The Precursors were an advanced race that preceded and were mythologized by the Forerunners. The Forerunners classified them as a transient being or a type zero civilization, having the ability to travel among the galaxies and accelerate the evolution of intelligent life. While the Precursors themselves had long since disappeared during the time of the Forerunners, evidence of their technological and architectural achievements remain scattered not only across the galaxy but also outside of it. Namely, in a Large Magellanic Cloud known as Path Kethona which will become important later on.
The Forerunners believe that the Precursors had created them in their image. That the Forerunners were meant to be the inheritors of the mantle. Most of the Forerunners believe an ideology that comes from the mythology of the Precursors themselves. Early Forerunners know the truth, however… but they hid this truth away and wrapped it in a shroud to give their civilization a more ideological status of the Precursors using them as a way to mold their society, like Greeks with the mythology of the Gods.
Terminals Among The Arc, the last and full record of the Forerunner history, shows a war had taken place between the Forerunners and the Precursors… but why?
As it turns out the Precursors had also created humanity and accelerated their evolution that of the Forerunners. The Precursors were playing God, attempting to create a perfect race to inherit the mantle of responsibility. The mantle, by the way, is the ideology that all races in the galaxy are created equal, all life is created equal. And if one form of life is to surpass another with no intentions of ill will towards the galaxy, then they are let them. The mantle was a great responsibility, and many of the human and Forerunner ideologies, come from the Precursor and the mantle itself, in one twisted form or another.
However, the Precursors found their creation, the Forerunners, to be a rather arrogant race, believing themselves to be the chosen ones to inherit the greatest responsibility in the galaxy. This swell of ego made the Precursors reconsider their decision and create humanity. Little to no knowledge was given to humanity as to the existence of the Precursors, as they believed that the same result might occur twice. Thus when the forerunners wiped the Precursors from the galaxy, the humans had very little knowledge of the Forerunners atrocities to the galaxy.
After the Precursor-Forerunner war, the Precursors initiated a fail-safe… The Flood. It is believed that The Flood was created for the sole purpose of wiping the galaxy clean of life and united them into a singular parasitic race that could dominate the galaxy capable of assimilated technology on a basic level. It also seemed that the Flood had an incredibly advanced genetic technology coded into their DNA in the form of neural physics. Neural Physics was a precursor concept in creation. Precursors believe that the entire universe was alive in a way that living beings could not comprehend. Their entire system of technology was based on this principle making most of it indestructible by normal means but the nature of their technology lead to be extremely susceptible to the effects of the Halo Array.
This was an unforeseen side effect of the Halo Arrays on the Precursors, even to the Forerunners. It is also believed to be a large reason why the Forerunners won the war against the Precursors initially. The Forerunners were testing firing a first Halo Ring in an area near the Precursors. At the time they didn't realize the scope of damage it would cause on existing life within that galactic region. Wiping out a huge amount of precursor technology out of existence.
So with advance Neurol Technology encoded into their DNA, the Flood ran rampant across the galaxy destroying large civilizations of Forerunners and humans and ultimately fueling a war between the two races, before the galaxy was wiped clean, to start again.
This is a summary of the timeline from the creation of the Forerunners up to the point that the galaxy was wiped clean by the Halo Array, but what of precursor technology, what value did it hold in today's Halo Universe and what impacts did it have? What was this civilization capable of doing?
Well, Precursor technology fueled the flood, they created the flood by dissassimilating their bodies into an organic powder. There are two versions from here in this organic powder. That the reconstitution of the organic powder would create parasitic beings know as The Flood or that a deteriorated form of this powder would later become sporadic like a mold or a mushroom. A more aggressive fungus that was capable of affecting conscious living beings in the galaxy that had thought patterns and brainwave, mutating them into something much more dangers.
The Flood works on an assimilation when they absorb something into their contingency, they also absorb all of the knowledge. This is believed to be why they can assimilate knowledge on a low level.
We’ll get into more about how the Flood works later, but specifically what you need to understand is that either way this technology of Neuro Physics, the abilities that the Grave Mind has, to be able to control The Flood within a certain sector of the galaxy, came from the technology of Neural Physics that the Precursors had. Whether this was actually encoded in the DNA or simply passed down through genetic manipulation over years inside the Precursor race is not completely determined, but both are highly likely, considering how advanced the Precursors were with their biological technology.
But speaking of The Flood, we should address the Primordial. The Primordial was a Grave Mind that identified itself as the last Precursor, revealing that the Precursors had been ruthlessly killed in a war with the Forerunners, millions of years before the events of Halo and that their ‘Answer’ is at hand.
Implying that a proto-flood form, described as a fine dust contained in hundreds of glass cylinders, was created as a revenge or as a fail-safe, after the Halo Ring was test fired within the Precursor section of the galaxy.
The fact alone that the Grave Mind considered itself as a Precursor, implies that the precursors created it for revenge against the Forerunners, if so, they were entirely successful.
However, there is also a second form that we talked about that was made via a powder that is referenced in Halo Cryptum. This power was the actual desiccated remains of a Precursor. They were again annihilated by ancient Forerunners who wished to seize control of the Mantle of Responsibility, from the Precursors, instead of letting them give it to Humanity.
Some Precursors hid in stasis, while others changed into dust found by ancient Humans. The latter created The Flood. The Flood only attacked Humanity for a short while because the Precursors favored Humanity. This ideology of the Precursors and mindset seemed to carry over even into their more aggressive parasitic mutations. The Flood / Precursors found Humanity worthy of the mantle and instead traveled to take revenge against the Forerunners.
It considered here that if The Flood finds a worthy successor of the mantle, then they would cease to exist, as they would crawl into a hole and starve themselves to death. However this is not necessarily proven right as later on in the Halo Series, they seem to just want to survive. This is also reinforced by the fact that The Flood was not a Precursor creation as it is revealed later throughout the book series.
The Flood was a perverted and insane remains of the Precursors. The dust that Humanity discovered that lead to the birth of The Flood threat was one of the fail-safe measures that the Precursors put in place to try and avoid their extinction. Over eons, however, the dust became flawed and corrupted. DNA mutations within the dust itself were rather easy to build up, which was something that they didn't think of in advance. Which is a rather short oversight of theirs.
Rather than rebirthing the Precursors as they were, it only brought a cancerous plague and death. The remaining Precursors were driven to insanity by the betrayal of their creations, the Forerunners, instead embraced death. Those insane remaining Precursors, guided The Flood so that it would cease to infect Humanity, as they had successfully immunized themselves.
The Precursors, insane but driven by the need to create new life, decided that the Flood would be their instrument. All life they had made from then on would be only suffering and would never have the chance to throw down their creators again. The very act of being exposed to the Precursors minds within the Grave Mind drove the Ur-Didact to a brooding hate filled insanity. Now Ur-Didact will play a larger role in Forerunner videos later to come as he was at the spearhead of the Human-Forerunner War and the Flood-Forerunner War. Playing a large role in both and having been affected by the Flood, you have to wonder if his heart was in the right place and were the Forerunners completely misguided through their entire war by an insane Didact.
A last few things about Precursor technology. The Precursors Organon was a web of information of billions of years of Precursor knowledge, also known as the Domain by the Forerunners. It demonstrates Precursor technology advancement. The Organon was destroyed when the Halo Array fired, as it was an artifact of Neural Physics, which was vulnerable to the effects of the Halo Array, which destroyed all Neural Structures of sufficient complexity.
This again was based on Neural Physics which is why it was destroyed by all Halo Arrays. There was one thing though that wasn't destroyed by the Halo Arrays effect and these were unbending filaments. Unbending Filaments were like orbital bridges between planets within the same solar system. Also called Star Roads. They were used in the final stages of the Forerunner-Flood War. They seemingly caused local space-time to warp and mutate when using their version of slip space travel.
It was also theorized by the Forerunners that these Unbending Filaments could connect entire different worlds in systems together. While this was never tested, it was hypothesized based on the constructions of these unbending filaments.
With all that being said, we still have questions about the specific origins of the Flood, the Human-Forerunner War, or many other questions left behind by the Precursors and the origins of the Halo Universe itself…
My video is at DLive