I have a question about the halo story-line: who and why built the halo rings? Seems really dumb.
Halo Story
- Thread starter hyperhammy
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The Forerunners built them when they were experimenting on the Flood, so that if they escaped containment, they could destroy all life with higher brain functions and starve the Flood, while allowing enough life to survive for evolution to create new sentient beings. It's all explained in Halo 1... Not even a massive way through it...
The forerunners, I think as a weapon against the flood (kind of like a last resort thing) At least thats the impression I got the trilogy (I didn't read/watch/play anything else)
The Forerunners built them as a weapon of last resort to stop the Flood. If the flood ever expanded beyond where the Forerunners could contain them the Forerunners would leave the galaxy to the Ark and fire the Halos, wiping out all developed life. Without a food source the Flood die out and life can restart.
The ringworlds were constructed as one part fortress world and one part weapons, they were made by the Forerunners during the war against the flood which according to canon was about one hundred thousand years before the events of the main trilogy.
The rings would be used to destroy the flood infection and the food supply because even though you could potentially destroy the flood with just one massive destructive event, the infection itself would still exist and be unstoppable provided that hosts to infect remained in existance.
The Forerunners were left with no choice but to activate the rings in a final last resort, destroying all intelligent life in the galaxy in the process. However having catalouged DNA samples of themselves and of nearly every sentient species in the known universe the galaxy was able to be repopulated after the remnant of the flood outbreak was well and truly destroyed.
The rings themselves however still housed dormant flood specimens that have rested for countless thousands of years waiting to be reawakened by a suitable host. Tragically the Covenant had mistaken the rings as something holy (which to be fair is understandable given the scale of mystery behind them) and activley try to hunt down the forerunner rings and once again attempting to repeat history. Albeit unknowingly.
So yeah, that's a little Halo trivia I was happy to share with you. Hope it helped explain a few things.
The rings would be used to destroy the flood infection and the food supply because even though you could potentially destroy the flood with just one massive destructive event, the infection itself would still exist and be unstoppable provided that hosts to infect remained in existance.
The Forerunners were left with no choice but to activate the rings in a final last resort, destroying all intelligent life in the galaxy in the process. However having catalouged DNA samples of themselves and of nearly every sentient species in the known universe the galaxy was able to be repopulated after the remnant of the flood outbreak was well and truly destroyed.
The rings themselves however still housed dormant flood specimens that have rested for countless thousands of years waiting to be reawakened by a suitable host. Tragically the Covenant had mistaken the rings as something holy (which to be fair is understandable given the scale of mystery behind them) and activley try to hunt down the forerunner rings and once again attempting to repeat history. Albeit unknowingly.
So yeah, that's a little Halo trivia I was happy to share with you. Hope it helped explain a few things.
Not HIM personally, but rather humanity. The idea was that the human race was either the direct or possibly indirect descendant of the forerunners themselves.Valate said:
That said by that point genetically speaking humans have probably developed vast evolutional differences to their Forerunner pasts.
The halo rings were built by the 'forerunners' an advanced alien civilization. They were built as a cyanide capsul against the flood. The idea is that if the flood ever wins, they use the rings to purge the galaxy of all life that they can feed on. the covenant view the rings as holy so they want to activate them.
They call him that because his armor is exactly like that of a mark 2 containment unit.Valate said:
Pretty much that yeah, though the flood themselves weren't the target so much as their source of food, the species which got infected by the flood I think. I remember things about the rings firing would make them starve and die, apart from of course the specimens in the halos themselves under sentinal watch.Vrex360 said:
The forerunners built them because they were too thick to effectively quarantine the Flood before it reached galactic pandemic proportions, and they failed to completely annihilate the Flood because the forerunners were, frankly, spectacularly thick and intentionally preserved some on the Halo network.
If you find the terminals in Halo 3 they tell more of the story of how the Forerunners are idiots.
If you find the terminals in Halo 3 they tell more of the story of how the Forerunners are idiots.
Well, that's explained in the games themselves. As for the entire story, there are three main games, an RTS, two spin-off shooters, seven books (to date), at least three comic series, and a graphic novel. And an anime series. So it's understandable if you're a bit lost. Plus two ARGs, but I personally don't count those as fitting established canon.hyperhammy said:
Anyway, to answer your question, the Halo rings (or 'Installations) were built by an alien race known as the Forerunners. The Forerunners were a race who built much of their technology based on an even earlier race, called the Precursors, who died ou previously to the Forerunner empire. The Forerunners were into all this sciency stuff and ended up studying a bunch of races, including a parasitic lifeform known as The Flood. The Flood basically took over people's bodies and leeched off them, and they ended up escaping into the wider galaxy. A massive war broke out between the Flood and the Forerunners, and the Halo rings were built as weapons, seven weapons that would wipe out all life in the Milky Way galaxy, to destroy the food source for the Flood (resulting in the species starving to death), for use as a last ditch attempt to stop them if the Forerunners seemed to be losing the war. They also built Shield Worlds (as told in the novels and the RTS, Halo Wars), which were micro Dyson Spheres (see Wikipedia) as refuges for them to survive the Halo blast in, and the Ark, which was a failsafe remote detonation site and refuge on Earth should the rings themselves be compromised and activation from one of them become impossible.
Anyway, the Forerunners were unable to reach their refuges when the Flood cornered them, and so when they detonated the rings they were all killed too. The Flood survived somehow, since apparently a few spores escaped the blast (and even a few spores are able to lay waste to an entire planet, think Tyranids but a thousand times worse). The Halo rings ended up being seen as religious icons by the Covenant millenia later, who were a group of species that basically worshipped the Forerunners but were completely idiotic and mistaken about the technology the race had left behind. And that leads into the main plot of the entire series.
Yeah, it dragged on a bit, but it's basically a summary of the entire story of the Forerunners, and answers your questions. As a self-confessed Halo fanboy (and one of the few people here who apparently know everything there is to know on the series), you can pretty much ask me anything about Halo and I can answer
. And yes, I do pose that as a challenge to anyone else interested in the series.But that doesn't explain humanity.Vrex360 said:
The human race is desendents of the forerunners, but why didn't they get wiped out along with the rest? And if they did, why did the forerunners populate Earth with their own kind, but not leaving them with records, tecnology and such... And what about all the proofs of human evolution, did the forerunners evolve on Earth? Why isen't there more remains from them then?
You may ask for references of humans being forerunners?
Firstly, 343 repeatingly refer to MC as "Reclaimer" and "Forerunner".
And human compatibility with Forerunner-tec.
Aaaaaand this: From http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Human-Covenant_War
The campaign to exterminate Humanity was an attempt by the Prophets to keep their power, under the disguise of a holy crusade. The Prophets found out that the Forerunner objects that the Luminary revealed on Harvest were actually Humans (which the Prophets interpreted as meaning that the Humans were descendants of the Forerunner, or possibly surviving Forerunner). Initially, the Covenant interpreted the glyph from the luminary as "Reclamation". Startlingly, the Forerunner AI Mendicant Bias revealed that the interpretation was wrong: the glyph meant "Reclaimer". The Prophets Regret and Truth realized that if the Humans were actually Forerunners, then it was possible to be left behind when the Great Journey occurs. This stood in contradiction to the Covenant religion, which held that no one would be left behind in the Great Journey. The Hierarchs, recognizing that this truth would destroy the Covenant, declared war on Humanity, hoping the truth would perish with their newly-declared foe.
Vrex, I'm disappointed in you! I thought you were the one person on this forum who could rival me as a human Halo-encyclopaedia! What you say is partly true, but also follows a common misconception. Because of what's said in the games, people often think that humans are the direct descendants of the Forerunners, when in fact according to the Terminals in Halo 3 humanity was already an evolving species on Earth (as noted by the Librarian when she was present at the Ark). It seems that the Librarian effectively gave humanity the blessing or something of the Forerunner species, as it were, and although the human race isn't a descendant race of the Forerunners (either directly or indirectly), something of the Forerunners is present within humanity itself. Which means you were partly right, but not totally. And it's also why 343 Guilty Spark referred to the humans as Forerunner even though he was completely aware they were a different race (although admittedly the onset of his later rampancy may also have contributed slightly to any possible confusion).Vrex360 said: