In today’s chapter we’re discussing the Forerunners VS Flood War that nearly wiped out all life in the galaxy. And If you haven’t read the previous chapters, I recommend pausing this one and checking them out first to follow the whole story. Just click the link below or you can check our menu in Complete Stories>Halo, okay?
Recaping
Recapping the last chapter, the Flood was devastating the human population, becoming increasingly powerful, forcing humans into a desperate flight across the galaxy.
This led them to take drastic actions, such as attacking other planets, either to occupy them as a new home or to sterilize them if already contaminated by the Flood, resulting in the extermination of entire populations. These brutal actions caught the attention of the Forerunners, who promptly initiated a war against humanity to stop them. At one point, the Flood, pressuring humans, retreated beyond the Milky Way’s borders, virtually disappearing for millennia, and was considered defeated.
But therein lies the danger. The Forerunners believed the defeat of the Flood was due to humans finding a cure for the disease, and when finally defeated, the humans did not wish to share the secret of this cure. However, the truth is there was never a cure.
It was all a strategy by the Flood, pressuring humans against the Forerunners, weakening both sides and strategically withdrawing, feigning defeat, and thus, when least expected, they would return.
We explain everything in this article:
Forerunners VS Flood
Initially, many believed the Flood was a fabrication by humans to evade Forerunner judgment and didn’t take the threat seriously. But after the end of war between humans and Forerunners, the Flood invaded the galaxy by surprise, using non-military ships to breach naval blockades, landing undetected on planets, and beginning their infection.
Thus, the Flood converted billions of Forerunners with each world consumed in just a few years. Eventually, Forerunner fleets were forced to start orbital bombardments on Flood-infested worlds to prevent spread to other systems. While the Parasite sought to assimilate all sentient life, the Forerunners tried to defend themselves against the threat using various measures to combat them directly, as well as conducting research into their capabilities.
After 300 years of war between the Flood and the Forerunners, the Forerunner High Command began to realize that extinction of their species was indeed plausible, as many had fallen victim to the plague. As the spread continued and orbital bombings no longer proved effective, more extreme measures became necessary, such as destroying the star of a planetary system if a significant presence of the Flood was detected. With the supernova explosion, the entire system would be obliterated but the Flood would be eradicated.
Forerunner military forces were ordered to wear heavy armor to prevent the infection form from attaching to their bodies and thus infecting the host.
The Flood was brought to Forerunner facilities to be studied in an effort to find a possible cure. The Didact proposed constructing numerous shield worlds throughout the galaxy to monitor for Flood outbreaks and provide military support if they occurred, employing tactical features he used in the war against humanity.
However, a faction of builders led by Master Builder Faber proposed constructing a series of superweapons to combat the Flood instead. The Didact considered these weapons an affront to the Mantle. The superweapon’s idea was the destruction of all sentient life in the galaxy, depriving the Flood of all the biomass they could consume, starving them to death, and thus eradicating them.
Although the Didact and his Promethean allies managed to delay the construction of the Halo by several thousand years, the Master Builder was eventually able to convince the Council to sanction his plans. The Didact was forced to cease his ongoing construction of shield worlds, ordered to hand over all his records, and submit to the authority of the Master Builder. He refused, was stripped of his power, and forced into exile as a result.
Forced into a cryptum, he was placed into meditative hibernation. The Didact’s cryptum was hidden by the Librarian on Earth to conceal it from the Master Builder and his allies, and allow her to implement her own plans, which involved removing him from his exile. She implanted Geas into the subconscious of newborn humans to find and care for the Didact’s cryptum and assist in its release.
Meanwhile, the Librarian created a contingency plan for life in the galaxy, the Conservation Measure, which would guarantee the repopulation of sentient beings in the event of a galaxy-wide Halo activation. After the Didact’s exile, the Librarian convinced the Council to approve an expedition to Path Kethona, theorized as the origin of the Parasite.
Additionally, the journey aimed to confirm a Forerunner legend of a previous Great Expedition to Path Kethona ten million years earlier.
On this expedition, she discovered traces of the Precursor civilization and ancient Forerunner ships and buildings. After some exploration, she discovered an entire Forerunner civilization with primitive technology, and after studies, she uncovered the entire truth about the place. The expedition that took them ten million years ago was to exterminate the remaining Precursors, and the civilization present were those who refused to participate in the genocide and were exiled there ever since.
The mission was deemed a failure, as the Librarian decided not to disclose all the horrors she discovered. It would be a severe blow to all Forerunners to learn that they were not the true heirs of the Mantle and that they were the killers of the Precursors.
Thanks to great assimilations, the Flood managed to form a Gravemind, making it more dangerous and difficult in combat.
As I explained in previous chapters, the Gravemind is like a kind of collective consciousness or central intelligence for the Flood, coordinating their movements and strategies.
It is composed of the accumulation of masses of bodies and minds of various species consumed by the Flood and has a highly advanced thinking and planning capacity. Among the characteristics of this being are collective memory, the ability to communicate via telepathy, including with other species, and total control of all forms of Flood.
Meanwhile...
To balance political tension within the Ecumene Empire, it was decided that the Forerunners would adopt the construction and use of the Halos to attack the Flood and use the Shield Worlds as shelter for firing. When activated, the Halo emits a devastating pulse of energy, capable of destroying all sentient life within an expansive radius of 25,000 light years, reaching a galactic scale. This pulse not only exterminates living organisms but also eradicates the biomass necessary for the Flood to reproduce and survive, effectively depriving it of its vital resource.
Now, the main mission was not to contain the advance but to index as many species as possible and take them to the Shield Worlds to repopulate the galaxy after the Halo shot. To create the Halos, an even larger structure called the Ark was created. Twelve Halos were created in total, 30,000 kilometers in length and 400 kilometers wide each.
After the Didact’s exile, Faber obtained authorization to build another smaller Ark and six more Halos, which, despite being smaller, 10,000 kilometers long, were able to move and position themselves more easily throughout the universe. The Ark, being smaller in scale, became known as the Lesser Ark, or Installation 00.
Faber then tasked Mendicant Bias with conducting the first test of a Halo facility, Unit 07, near Charum Hakkor. The shot released the Ancient being known as the Primordial.
The entity was captured and taken to the facility under Faber’s orders. Since he did not trust the lifeworker scientists who first studied the creature, Faber soon assigned Mendicant Bias to interrogate it. Over a thousand years later, the Didact was discovered and revived by a young Forerunner manipular named Bornstellar-Makes-Eternal-Lasting.
Manipulars are Forerunners adolescents who have not yet been assigned to any caste in society and have not yet undergone the necessary mutations to become an adult. Bornstellar was searching for Precursor relics. He was influenced and guided by two humans, Chakas and Riser, through Geas implanted by the Librarian.
After the revival, they fled in a ship and the Didact set course for Charum Hakkor, seeking to discover what had happened in his absence. There he discovered that one of the Halos had already been tested, eradicating all sentient life as well, along Precursor structures in the system.
Visiting Charum Hakkor stirred ancient memories in the humans that had been imprinted with Geas into their genetic material by the Librarian, and in order to trigger more of these memories, they traveled to the system where the San’shyuum, once allies of humanity, had been quarantined after their defeat by the Forerunners.
Before arriving in the San’shyuum home system, the Didact performed a patent mutation on the young manipular to allow him access to the domain. With the mutation, the Didact transferred his imprint, containing his consciousness along with all of his memories and knowledge to Bornstellar, though many of them did not awaken within the manipular until later.
However, the Didact’s ship was intercepted and dismantled by the Master builder’s forces, who were present in the system, suppressing a rebellion.
The Didact and the others were taken prisoner, and in subsequent interrogations, refused to divulge information about the shield worlds or the control codes for the contender class Ancillas, which were extremely intelligent artificial intelligences, very similar to Cortana, according to the Librarian herself in future games.
Although other Forerunners, including the Librarian, believed the Didact had been executed, the Master builder left him, along with several other Forerunners, to die confined in stasis bubbles on an abandoned ship within a system controlled by the Flood.
Soon, the consciousness, personality, and memories of the Didact began to take hold in Bornstellar, gradually transforming him into a clone of the Didact, even in appearance.
He overhears a conversation between his father and another Forerunner, learning that the Master Builder had fired a Halo to exterminate Janjur Qom, the planet of the San’Shyuum. The Council found out about this, and the Master Builder was to be judged for disrespecting the Mantle. He also heard that a Halo had gone missing, and he explained to his family that, through the Didact’s memories, he discovered that this missing Halo was the same one the Master Builder used to fire on Charum Hakkor, thus releasing the Primordial.
His family convinces him to testify against the Master Builder during the trial, and Bornstellar travels to the Forerunner capital.
The Corruption of Mendicant Bias
The plan to build Halo and index all sentient life was coming to fruition when Mendicant Bias, who had been assigned to interrogate the entity that called itself the Last Precursor, was corrupted, after 43 years of interrogations and was convinced to help the Flood in their campaign.
As a result, several Forerunner fleets and naval battle tactics were easily overcome by the Flood.
During the trial of the Master builder for his recent actions in use of Halo indiscriminately without authorization from the Council, the artificial intelligence Mendicant Bias launches an attack against the Forerunner’s capital. In this attack, Mendicant Bias managed to disable sentries, ships, launch large attacks through the Flood, and also gather five Halos, including the one that was missing after the attack on Charum Hakkor.
The battle was intense with a Halo fired with massive damage to the capital, but Mendicant Bias was unable to control all the Halos, and they entered a safe mode that would take them directly to the Instalation 00 through a portal. Things ended up not going well, and only a single Halo managed to reach its destination. Bornstellar, or IsoDidact, also managed to pass through the portal and met his wife in the Ark.
At this point, Bornstellar had assumed the position of the Didact, as he now possessed all of his memories, experiences, and even his appearance. He became known as the Iso-Didact, while the original Didact was referred to as the Ur-Didact. The Librarian, thinking that the UrDidact was dead, also accepted him as her husband.
Several species had not yet been indexed, and only one location became safe and accessible to the Forerunners, the Installation 00, or Lesser Ark, which, in addition to building the Halos, could house life.
The indexed species were all taken to the Ark, along with some living specimens, and of course, several Forerunners. The Librarian personally went to Erde Tyrene to collect and index the human species and animals on the planet. Upon returning, she relocated most of the living human specimens to Installation 07 that orbited the Ark.
Chakas and Riser, the humans who helped revive UrDidact from the Cryptum, were on Halo 07, with their Geas in their mind. The Geas of Chakas was Forthencho, Lord of the Human Admirals, and of Riser was Yprin, the woman who discovered the Last Primordial in Charum Hakkor. Mendicant Bias manages to gather all the humans in this Halo, removes all their Geas, and inserts them into monitors.
Then IsoDidact appears, manages to deactivate Mendicant Bias, and sends Halo 07 through a portal straight to the Lesser Ark. In this process, the IsoDidact encounters the Last Primordial and he reveals himself to be a gravemind.
He also reveals the entire origin of the Flood, and that the Forerunners are not the true heirs of the Mantle. After the conversation, the IsoDidact kills the Primordial by activating a temporal chamber, making time accelerate billions of years.
The IsoDidact then exits the Halo and places the consciousness of Chakas and other humans on a monitor, which would later be known as 343 Guilty Spark.
Didact's Nightmare
Meanwhile, in another part of the galaxy, the UrDidact was released from his stasis bubble due to a power failure. Assessing his situation, he soon discovered that he was aboard an operationally flawed Hulk with no armor or weapons. He soon also realized that his ship was being taken by the Flood, but he decided to remain on the ship, determined to get answers.
Confident that even if he perished, his duplicate would continue his work. The Didact was confronted by the Gravemind and realized that it was the same Intelligence as the Primordial, which he had encountered on Charum Hakkor. The Gravemind invaded the Didact’s mind and inflicted upon him undignified mental torment, in a process described by the Didact as more of a curse than a conversation.
The Didact’s sanity and morale were severely shaken by this encounter. However, Gravemind had no intention of killing or infecting the Didact, instead transforming the Forerunner’s most formidable warrior into an unwitting agent of chaos within the remnants of the Ecumene Empire. Thus, Gravemind freed the Didact, leaving him aboard an abandoned spacecraft, deliberately directing it to where the Master Builder was located.
Upon reuniting with Faber, the Didact relayed a devastating message from Gravemind, mocking the Master Builder with the torment of his family, who had been assimilated into the Flood Collective.
The Didact’s privileges were later reinstated, even though the IsoDidact maintained leadership over the Ecumene’s forces. Marginalized by much of the Ecumene, UrDidact retreated to Requiem, persisting in his crusade against the Flood’s onslaught.
Realizing his previous strategies were obsolete now that Gravemind had acquired all pertinent knowledge, he urgently sought new methods to combat the Flood. Unable to determine the Flood’s immunity by other means, including a trial procedure that left him disfigured, he obtained a Composer, a device intended to strip the Flood of Forerunners by converting their essence into digital form yet abandoned due to various functional flaws.
In unanimous agreement, UrDidact’s Promethean allies committed to becoming Composites, freeing themselves from their biological forms.
The Didact himself did not undergo the Composer process, as his new form was incompatible with the device. UrDidact then utilized the Composer to render his Prometheans completely resistant to Flood infection by merging their Composite essences with formidable war machines known as Promethean Warriors.
While these new warriors achieved a singular victory against a fleet overrun by the Flood, it quickly became evident that their numbers were insufficient to stop the Parasite’s advance, prompting UrDidact to explore additional means of expanding his army.
Following his return to the Ecumene, a meeting was convened between UrDidact, the Librarian, and IsoDidact, which soon turned sour.
Distorted by his madness, UrDidact engaged in a heated debate with the Librarian and his clone, accusing the latter’s strategies and actions of endangering the Forerunners. UrDidact had concluded that the Flood had deliberately favored humans, choosing not to infect them 10,000 years prior, and targeted the Forerunners for vengeance.
Consequently, he viewed the Librarian’s support for humanity as a betrayal aligned with the Flood’s intentions. Ur-Didact departed to a desolate area and was soon joined by Iso-Didact.Their dialogue highlighted the divergence between the two Didacts, with the original denouncing IsoDidact as an inferior and flawed replica.
Before the dispute escalated into violence, the Flood’s approach to the planet was detected. The Didacts launched into orbit in their respective ships as millions of Flood descended upon the planet. While the IsoDidact and Librarian set course for the Greater Ark, now the last bastion of the Ecumene Empire, UrDidact followed in his personal vessel.
At the Greater Ark, UrDidact remained aboard his ship within the station, refraining from leaving even to attend the emergency gathering of Forerunner commanders. He was briefly visited by the Librarian, who was appalled by what her husband had become. As the Greater Ark fell under Flood’s siege, UrDidact expressed no interest in defending it, crudely asserting he would depart once his mission was completed.
His scheme was unveiled amid the chaos when he led his ship, accompanied by thousands of Sentinels under his command, to Halo 07, employing the Composer to harvest the entire human population at the facility, essentially what remained of the human specimens collected by the Librarian. The Librarian’s attempt to thwart him failed, as UrDidact’s ship easily outmaneuvered hers. UrDidact returned to Requiem and integrated human essences into hundreds of thousands of Promethean warriors, bolstering his mechanical forces.
In his twisted vision, these machines would ultimately conquer the Flood, and the remnants of the Forerunners would unite under their rule with Requiem serving as the power nexus and capital of the new Ecumene Empire. Once the Parasite was defeated, UrDidact planned to initiate a campaign to annihilate humanity and any other species that might threaten the Mantle’s loss by the Forerunners. Devastated by the loss of her humans, the Librarian pursued UrDidact to Requiem with the intent of imprisoning him.
At this juncture, the last loyal Promethean, the Didact’s former consort now his Chief Lieutenant, remained uncomposed. Initially appearing supportive of UrDidact, her loyalty was merely a facade. She eventually concurred with the Librarian that Didact was unfit to lead the Prometheans and warranted exile to a cryptum.
Ensconced in his fortress, UrDidact was confronted by the Librarian. After a brief discussion, the Librarian subdued Didact using force and confined him in a combat cryptum. Embedding the cryptum in Requiem’s core, she aspired for UrDidact to reflect on his past misdeeds during his confinement, hoping the gravemind-induced mental scars could heal through contact with the domain.
Once roused, Didact was to assist humanity in ascending as the galaxy’s new stewards, enlightening them on the Mantle and guiding them to Forerunner technological marvels using the Janus Key, which revealed the locations of all Forerunner relics across the galaxy. The Librarian sealed Requiem and commandeered the stationed Promethean warriors, instructing them to prevent UrDidact’s awakening until his meditation concluded.
Departing Requiem, the Librarian set off for Erde Tyrene, or Earth, to commence construction of a portal leading to the Ark, anticipating future human discovery.
Meanwhile, the IsoDidact dispatched rescue vessels to the planet, all of which were annihilated by Mendicant Bias, who was commanding the Flood, along with several monitors that contained the essences of Humans who fought in the war against the Forerunners.
One of them, which contained the essence of the Lord of Admirals Forthencho, sent a transmission to the Librarian stating that the Halo’s activation would obliterate the Domain, as it was also the creation of the Precursors.
This meant the eradication of eons of archived wisdom in the domain and condemned UrDidact to eons of silence in his cryptum, deprived of the domain’s meditative aid, exacerbating his insanity. Then the Librarian sends a warning to the IsoDidact not to activate the Halo.
Thinking it was a ruse by the Flood to deceive and halt the Halo’s activation, the IsoDidact is skeptical and ultimately triggers it, wiping out all life in the galaxy. The Librarian also perishes from the Halo’s blast.
Only a handful of Flood specimens survived within research facilities. Moreover, the IsoDidact, with assistance from another AI, Offensive Bias, captures and reprograms Mendicant Bias with a sole mission—to repair. The survivors of the Halo’s devastation celebrate the dawn of a new era.
The Forerunners repatriated all survivors to their home worlds, alongside key ships tasked with repopulating the planets with the Index species. They discovered that all Precursor structures had been destroyed, a foreseen yet devastating reality. The domain became unreachable, confirming the truth behind the Librarian’s message.
Remember how I mentioned in the first chapter that the ancient structures had a nervous system, almost as if they were alive? Well, since the Halo obliterated all life in the galaxy, it also destroyed all these ancient structures, as well as the domain. After managing the galaxy’s entire repopulation process, the Forerunners bestowed upon humans the title of Reclaimers, granting them full access to Forerunner technologies and acknowledging them as the rightful Heirs of the Mantle. This designation as Reclaimers and the recognition of humans as Heirs of the Mantle explains why only humans can activate the Halo in the games.
The Forerunners, under IsoDidact’s leadership, went into self-imposed exile, vowing never to meddle in the galaxy’s destiny again.
And that was the end of the Halo prehistory and the Forerunner Saga Book Trilogy.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. In the next one, we’ll finally talk about the dreaded Covenant alliance as we move into the modern era of Halo.
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