Halo 3: The Cradle of Life

Halo 3: The Cradle of Life is a short flash animation web comic, one of the first parts of the Iris campaign.

Background
It was found on June 14, 2007 by a Bungie.net user, crazyBoy3. The link was found in a Circuit City ad, and the site was first step of what would later become the Iris viral marketing campaign. It tells a short story about a Tribal Elder of an ancient civilization, presumably very early humanity. It takes place in the continent of Africa, on Earth, over 100,000 years ago.

Synopsis
The Cradle of Life tells the story of an African tribesman, N'chala, who goes every morning to the same spot in the plains and watches something special. The comic implies that the "gods" are building a huge machine in a large lake on the plains of Africa.

This structure, being constructed by several Strato-Sentinels, appears to be the Portal to the Ark, since this is the only known Forerunner structure on Earth.

IP Address
On the last page of the comic, there are 3 panels. They are each able to be moved with the mouse to reveal certain numbers. When the numbers were arranged in order, they became an IP Address, 206.16.223.65, which lead to a site. This site was part of the Alternate Reality Game, Iris.

Trivia

 * The name "Cradle of Life" may possibly be one of the names the Forerunners gave Earth when they made landfall on the planet.
 * It may also reference the fact that Earth, and more specifically Africa are seen as the birthing place of modern man.
 * N'chala is similar to the Arabic word, inshallah, which means God willing.
 * As of December 2009, the website that contains the comic is no longer active. This is probably in sync with Bungie's deletion of the AdjutantReflex profile, ending the Iris campaign.