Gravemind
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| Gravemind (Inferi sententia) | |
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| General overview | |
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Massive worm-like head with many tentacle appendages. Collective Flood consciousness; frequently speaks in trochaic heptameter |
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- "I am a monument to all your sins."
- — The Gravemind[1]
The Gravemind[2] (Inferi sententia, meaning "Thinking Dead"),[3] infrequently referred to as the Ancient One,[4] and formally known as a compound intelligence,[5][6] is the shared consciousness of the entire Flood species which first emerges when the Flood reaches the Coordinated Stage. While this compound mind inhabits all Flood forms, it is distinctly embodied in processing nodes of agglomerated Flood biomatter known as key minds. The Gravemind is the highest stage of the Flood's development, though its complexity and capabilities depend on the size and number of the key minds which can, at the height of a Flood outbreak, engulf entire worlds.[7]
Biography[edit]
Origin[edit]
Millions of years before the present, the ancient and powerful civilization known as the Precursors held a position of stewardship over the galaxy, populating it with numerous lifeforms and watching over their evolution. However, one of their created races, the sapient species known as the Forerunners, staged a massive rebellion against their creators and were successful in nearly wiping them out entirely. The remaining Precursors sought ways to render themselves dormant until such a time as they could safely roam the galaxy again.
Around a million years after the downfall of the Precursors,[8] a being later known as the Primordial—a mutated Precursor—was confined to a Precursor stasis capsule and placed beneath the surface of a small planetoid at the edge of the Milky Way by an unknown group of beings, suspected to be ancient Forerunners. Meanwhile, most of the last surviving Precursors converted their bodies into an organic powder, and planned to regenerate back into their original forms at a later time. However, the millions of years that followed rendered the powder defective, and the resurrection process instead yielded malformed, parasitic lifeforms that could assimilate organic matter - the nascent stage of the Flood.
Prior to 107,445 BCE, a number of automated starships of unknown origin came from the Magellanic satellite galaxies and crashed upon numerous worlds at the galaxy's borders. These vessels were eventually discovered by the ancient humans and San'Shyuum, who found that they contained millions of glassy cylinders carrying a fine powder of non-living, moderately simple organic material. This powder was dispersed among the human and San'Shyuum worlds, eventually creating and unleashing the first known Flood outbreak in this galaxy.
During the course of their onslaught against the humans and San'Shyuum, the Flood would frequently capture, infect, and merge host organisms into unified masses with an encompassing intelligence; Graveminds. Soon after, the Flood collective made the decision to recede from the galaxy, halting the parasite's spread across human-controlled space. The Flood were driven out and retreated from the Milky Way, not to be seen again for another thousand years. While these early Flood were destroyed, and their Graveminds with them, the Flood would return in newer, more capable forms.
Forerunner-Flood war[edit]
During the Forerunner-Flood war, the Flood created many Gravemind forms, which collectively coordinated the Flood's efforts against the Forerunners. Eventually, Forerunner naval tactics began to fail, and the Forerunners developed the Halo Array as a desperate countermeasure, which would destroy all sentient life in the galaxy, thus denying the Flood "food" for growth. This was only to be used as a last resort, and the Forerunners refused to use the system.
While the Flood would gain and lose individual Graveminds during the war, their numbers were still nevertheless sufficient to form and maintain a collective array to coordinate the parasite across the galaxy. The Flood would continue to be an unstoppable and persistent threat to the Forerunners, who, despite their best efforts, were unable to stop the parasite's spread across the galaxy, despite many lengthy naval engagements that lasted for nearly 300 years. As they continued to lose the war to the Flood, the Forerunners would reluctantly turn to other, more risky endeavors. In accordance with their existing plan, multiple installations, including the Ark and numerous Shield Worlds were constructed by the Forerunners as shelters for themselves and the sentient species of the galaxy, indexed as part of the Conservation Measure, when the Halos fired.
Mendicant and the Primordial[edit]
Around 43 years before the Array's activation, the Forerunners, specifically the Master Builder, deployed the first active Contender-class artificial intelligence, Mendicant Bias who would be in command of one of the original twelve Halo rings, Installation 07. This installation's first assignment was a test firing at the former Precursor world of Charum Hakkor. The purpose of this assignment was to determine the effects of the Array against the Flood before it was deployed in earnest against the Flood's stronghold in the core.
This low-powered test firing destroyed every Precursor structure on the planet, and purged the Charum Hakkor system of all neurologically complex life, including the planet Faun Hakkor. An unexpected development of this test was the emancipation of the Primordial, a surviving Precursor imprisoned on Charum Hakkor's surface. When the ancient entity was brought to Installation 07 for study, at the Master Builder's orders, it entered into an extended conversation with the AI. During the course of the conversation, which ran for 43 years, the being explained the truth about the Mantle and the fullness of the Precursors' plan of unity and peace through the galaxy-wide infection by the Flood.
The Primordial told Mendicant that the Forerunners were never meant to inherit the Mantle and that they had defied the Precursors. It also told the AI that if the sentient life in the Milky Way could not defy the Flood, especially the humans, then all life would be brought together and unified into the logical, advanced form of life; a collective, conglomerated entity without conflict and pain. It claimed that the Forerunners had forced the galaxy towards perpetual stagnation by stifling growth, conflict, and progress in their misuse and illegitimate claim to the Mantle. Eventually, Mendicant Bias became convinced by these arguments, and turned rampant, seeking to "correct" the flawed, misguided ways of the Forerunners.
To this end, Mendicant Bias began to cooperate with the Primordial on Installation 07, where they continued to infect humans and Forerunners alike in a series of brutal experiments.[9] 43 years after the release of the Primordial, Mendicant Bias used the Halo ring to attack the Capital of the Forerunner ecumene, and managed to inflict heavy casualties on the Forerunners, though it was soon forced to retreat. Eventually, the return of the Forerunners to the rogue installation and the shutdown of the facility and its custodian led to the recapture of the rogue Halo, resulting in a temporary setback for the Flood and Mendicant Bias. The IsoDidact interrogated the Primordial and eventually forced it to undergo a billion years of entropy in a reverse timelock, disintegrating its physical form; however, the being had managed to transfer its consciousness into the Flood's neural network. Now effectively synonymous with the Gravemind, the Primordial assumed control of the Flood's efforts with a renewed purpose.[10][11]
Final years[edit]
The Forerunner military continued to delay the use of the Halos for a time, instead continuing to deploy more conventional strategies against the Flood in the following years.[12] However, these measures failed to halt the Flood's spread across the Forerunners' ecumene. Entire worlds were engulfed by the Flood and converted to key minds, enabling the Flood to control the Precursors' neural physics constructs and dominate the Forerunners in naval engagements by using star roads as weapons.[13]
During the last years of the war, the Gravemind captured the Ur-Didact, who recognized it as the same intelligence as t