Canon

Nothing

From Halopedia, the Halo wiki

"We called ourselves the Veiled Ones. Then we became the Lost Ones. Now we call ourselves Nothing, and that is well with us."
— Nothing to Rosa Fuertes.[1]

Nothing, formerly the Veiled Ones and the Lost Ones, are a group of Precursors residing on Netherop. Their name stems from their "unmaking" at the hands of the Forerunners during the Forerunner-Precursor war, noting that they had been reduced to "nothing".[1]

Overview[edit]

Nothing appeared to be of the friendlier kind of Precursor, choosing to hide themselves away but at the same time allowing the Defenders of the Sanctum to share their hiding place, kept them fed using the Precursors' technology and allowed them to live in some modicum of comfort for over thirty years which was an act of compassion that didn't match the Forerunner stories about the race.[2] The Precursors also healed Rosa Fuertes' injuries and incurable prion disease on the condition that Rosa kept their existence a secret and warned her that everyone must leave as they would all die otherwise,[1] likely aware that the Inner Sanctum would become uninhabitable once the power source was gone.[3]

Unlike the other Precursors, Nothing used an extrodinarily advanced form of self-directing nanotechnology rather than technology based off of neural physics.[2] Keely Iyuska suggested that such technology was probably just a parlor trick to a species as advanced as the Precursors.[4] The Precursor nanotechnology was unaffected by the firing of the Halo Array and was still active a hundred thousand years later where it was made use of by the Defenders of the Sanctum, a group of Sangheili exiles on the planet.[5] The technology was powered by a vacuum energy condenser and once it was removed,[6] all of the Precursor technology shut down, causing the food and water that it had grown for the Sangheili to wither and become contaminated.[3]

History[edit]

During the Forerunner-Precursor war, they fled to Netherop to hide from their genocide at the hand of the Forerunners, coming to manipulate the native civilization on the world via telepathic messaging. When Netherop was discovered by the Forerunners and a Guardian Custode dispatched to investigate a potential Precursor, Nothing directed the native Chynndokahli to gather their people in a temple, so that they could use the Precursor superweapon the Divine Hand to fire upon and destroy the Guardian.[7]

The use of the Divine Hand devastated Netherop and made its surface uninhabitable, though Nothing remained present on the world even after the firing of the Halo Array at the end of the Forerunner-Flood war. In 2559, Nothing communicated with Rosa Fuertes after she fell into Netherop during a mission to the world to recover the Divine Hand. Nothing offered Rosa the choice to either exist or not exist, going on to cure Rosa's prion disease for her cooperation. Before returning Rosa to Netherop's surface, Nothing made her promise that she would not speak a word of their interaction to anyone on the outside; if she did, and for those who came back to Netherop after their mission left, would also be made to "not exist".[1] Rosa subsequently kept quiet about her encounter with the Precursors, sure that they were still with her, not wanting to know what they would do if Rosa betrayed them, and knowing that, real or not, they had saved her life.[8]

Subsequently, the Banished were allowed to take the Precursor weapon before all of the survivors of the battle fled Netherop before Created forces could arrive to investigate.[9] Without the power source for the Divine Hand, the Sanctum of the Ancients and the remaining Precursor technology on the planet lost power, causing the food and water that had been grown for the Defenders of the Sanctum to become withered and contaminated, leaving Nizat 'Kvarosee and Tam 'Lakosee facing imminent death after they were left behind, fulfilling the Precursors' warning to Rosa that anyone who remained behind would die.[3]

List of appearances[edit]

Sources[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d Halo: Outcasts, chapter 16
  2. ^ a b Halo: Outcasts, chapter 17
  3. ^ a b c Halo: Outcasts, chapter 25
  4. ^ Halo: Outcasts, chapter 13
  5. ^ Halo: Outcasts
  6. ^ Halo: Outcasts, chapter 21
  7. ^ Halo: Outcasts, Adjunct
  8. ^ Halo: Outcasts, chapter 22
  9. ^ Halo: Outcasts, chapter 24