Halo is a first-person shooter game franchise set in a military science fiction universe originally created by Bungie and now produced by 343 Industries. It has been and continues to be a significant part of many gamers’ lives to this day, featuring an epic campaign in a future of humanity’s space expansion. The Halo universe is rich and expansive, so it doesn’t limit itself to the stories told in the games, but also stretches its boundaries to books, live-action series, animated series, comics, and even an anime.
In this series, we’re going to dive deep into the Halo stories, from their very beginnings to the current events of the saga.
The Origin of Halo Universe
First and foremost, the story of Halo is divided into two periods. The prehistoric era before the Halos were fired, and the modern era after the first and only firing of the rings. Starting from the literal beginning of time billions of years ago, beings known as the Primordials or Precursors arrived in the Milky Way.
They were the most advanced race ever to exist in the Milky Way, being immortal and transcendent beings, also known as Dreamers, for their ability to transcend the fabric of reality, essentially becoming one with the universe, capable of possessing or not possessing a physical form.
The Precursors aimed to experience existence in its entirety, in all its details, from the simplest to the most complex, creating interstellar empires or even living primitively and isolated on some planet.
They had time for this, as they did not die and were capable of transmuting themselves and thus starting a new life from scratch.
The Mantle of Responsability
They brought with them a philosophy, which was adopted by their successors as a religion known as the Mantle of Responsibility, and remember this name well, as it is a central piece in the unfolding of the saga. The race that held this philosophy and the power to uphold it became responsible for the care and maintenance of all life in the galaxy, aiding inferior species in ascending in knowledge and technology, so that one day they might become evolved beings capable of contemplating the universe in a transcendent way, just as the Precursors did.
However, not everything was rosy, as the Mantle also allowed for competition and conflict, which should be healthy in a certain way, when aimed at a common good, such as protecting the weaker, for example.
But of course, I don’t need to tell you that the dual interpretation of this clause caused a lot of confusion and rolling heads, something you’ll understand more as we go forward. Precursor technology was known as Neural Physics, something that transcended the fabric of space and connected with the universe itself, so its architecture practically had a life of its own, and was tied to reality as a whole. Hence the name Neural Physics, something that, trying to explain simply, accessed the nervous system of the universe, connecting to reality, as if it were a living being as well.
With this technology, they were able to create entire solar systems with little difficulty, something almost supernatural, so don’t try to understand how Precursor structures really were. Just remember the main thing, all Precursor constructions and origins had a nervous system, making them practically alive. The Precursors traveled between worlds and ships that used highly advanced artificial intelligences, known as Engines of Knowledge, and navigated through the Star Roads, a kind of galactic bifrost for those who are into Norse mythology.
The billions of years of knowledge of the Precursors needed to be stored somehow, so the domain was created.
But what exactly is the Domain?
The domain is an encyclopedia. With all the knowledge of the Precursors acquired over the ages, and was widely used by the Forerunners, although they were not able to explore it in its entirety, they had the domain as one of the central pieces of their culture. So, if you’re going to read any book from the Forerunner Empire Trilogy, that’s what the domain is and what they talk about so much and in the games, it appeared in Halo 5.
The Rise of the Forerunners
Over the ages, the Precursors began creating new intelligent lifeforms, to be their companions and apprentices, thus sowing life in the galaxy. In these experiments emerged the Forerunners, prehistoric Humans, prehistoric San’shyuum, among other races.
And opening a small parenthesis, I’m defining some races as prehistoric, because they still exist in the modern times of the lore, but with their genetic data completely altered. The reason for the data being altered, I will explain later. Among their creations was their favorite, the inhabitants of the planet Ghibalb, a humanoid species called Forerunners.
From their creation, the Forerunners proved to be very promising, and evolved their technology exponentially, becoming a race capable of space travel and soon becoming a galactic empire. Pleased with such advances, the Precursors wished to pass on to them the responsibility and teachings of the Mantle. But that’s where things start to go wrong.
Remember when I said there was more than one interpretation of the philosophy of the Mantle?
So, in relation to the idea that there can be conflicts, the Forerunners used such interpretation in a cruel way, that instead of using force as a means of protecting the weaker, they used it as a means of preventing the evolution of certain species in order to remain supreme over all other forms of life, thus creating an ecumene empire, something comparable to what was the Roman Empire.
At one point, they managed to destroy their own home planet, Ghibalb, as a result of a failed stellar engineering test. They were experimenting with capturing energy from stars, but their mistake was conducting such tests near inhabited planets.
The disaster caused by one of these tests ended up destroying what was considered a paradise planet. Ghibalb was ravaged by a supernova that completely wiped out life on the planet, making it extremely radioactive.
In addition to this, other nearby systems were also hit by the explosion, thus almost extinguishing the Forerunners. Whether out of arrogance or greed, the reality is that the Forerunners didn’t really care about the well-being of life in the galaxy. They just cared about staying in power.
Forerunners VS The Precursors
Observing such an event, the Precursors then thought about the possibility of revoking the Forerunners’ right to the Mantle, and handing it over to a prehistoric humanity, which was also very technologically advanced in terms of world-building.
Outraged, the Forerunners, believing themselves to be the chosen ones of their gods and the supreme race of the Milky Way, let envy and hatred take over, as they could not accept losing their position to a relatively inferior race. So, they gave the flimsy and false excuse that the Precursors wanted to exterminate them, as a pretext for a genocide against their creators, thus forcibly taking the philosophy of the Mantle of Responsibility for themselves.
Now, it was the Forerunners who would dictate the fate of the galaxy, and no longer the Precursors. These ancient beings, until then immortal, had never experienced such cruelty and violence. Many don’t realize how the Precursors were defeated by their own creation, which was technologically far inferior to them.
To give you an idea, at this point in time, the Forerunners had been around for roughly 5 million years, compared to the likely billions of years of the Precursors. It is believed that they were caught off guard by the attack, and also did not wish to destroy their creation, as this would go against the principles of the Mantle, thus exposing a vulnerability. Some Precursors escaped or were spared by a few Forerunners, who remained loyal to their creators.
They then entered suspended animation, or transformed into molecular dust, intending to eventually regenerate in the future, and somehow resolve the situation. However, over millions of years, and for reasons unknown at the time, this dust became defective and corrupt. Failing to reconstruct the Precursors, and instead giving rise to an infectious disease that caused mutations in beings that came into contact with it, this new form would later be known as the Flood.
Far from accepting defeat and extinction, the remaining Precursors, who did not transform into dust, saw the Flood as a mean to bring unity to the galaxy and punish the Forerunners for their insolence. Consumed by hatred and surrendering to madness, swearing that none of their creations would ever rise against them again, the remaining Precursors decided that all life would be deprived of free will, and fused into one, thus making the Flood the true product of the Precursors’ pain and suffering. However, not all the Precursors took this course of revenge.
After the Genocides, the Forerunners who refused to exterminate their creators were deemed traitors to the Empire, and abandoned on a barren planet in the Path Kethona galaxy. There, they discovered two Precursors who had not become corrupted, but chose to take on a more gentle and peaceful nature. Despite the efforts of the loyal Forerunners to help them, they chose to die alongside their species.
And that was just the first chapter of our Halo saga.
In the next chapter, we will delve into the war between the Ancient Humans and the Forerunners and how it shaped the current society in the games.
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