Talk:Composer

sloppy
I've made my pitifull attempt to create it, now could someone with more skill help make it look better? Thank you.Jac0bBau3r1995 06:34, 15 March 2012 (EDT)

The Composer in Halo 4: Possible Appearance?
Hey, does anybody know if the Composer machine makes an actual appearance in Halo 4? If so, what does it look like? If a detail physical description is available, one should be added to the article. Also, if it was actually seen in-game in Halo 4, could we possibly get some high-quality screenshots of it somehow? --Xamikaze330 (talk|contribs) 14:09, 7 November 2012 (EST)Xamikaze330


 * It does. We see it physically in the level Shutdown. Tuckerscreator (stalk ) 14:10, 7 November 2012 (EST)

Mention in the Bestiarum?
According to the Bestiarum, the Forerunners had the technology to reproduce entire individuals from encoded DNA/RNA/silicon samples in data streams. Might that be a mention of the Composer?--The All-knowing Sith&#39;ari (talk) 17:49, 30 January 2013 (EST)


 * Maybe, but I find that highly unlikely. The Librarian herself said that their attempts to use the Composer to revert to biological form created abominations. I would say more like data strands, as in strands of painstakingly preserved living samples of DNA and the like held in storage in suspended animation. Something like that. --Xamikaze330 (talk|contribs) 19:03, 30 January 2013 (EST)Xamikaze330

The victims on Installation 07
I have a theory about the supposedly distinct "alternate function" discussed in its own section of the page; that is, the strange, still-conscious but decaying Flood victims witnessed toward the end of Primordium. Currently, the page suggests that this is a completely different remedy for Flood victims only tangentially connected to the Composer's main function, but in light of information from Silentium it's far more likely that we're actually seeing the documented byproduct of the Composer's standard process; i.e. the Flood victims we see have been re-implanted in new bodies, but that fails to remove the problem and the new bodies are quickly corrupted again by the metaphysical Flood infection still present in the essences. Still, the Composer process appears to guarantee that instead of becoming effective combat forms, the victims will just fall apart eventually, as demonstrated by Forthencho and his warriors in the Librarian's final scene in Silentium. To me, this interpretation is much more probable than the idea that the otherwise straightforward Composer has some other, unspecified and undocumented way of treating Flood infectees. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 03:43, 4 April 2014 (EDT)

Specifics of Composer corruption
The above touches upon another topic I've wanted to address regarding the Composer and its faults. The Forerunner Saga makes it clear that mind uploading and imprinting into new bodies is virtually an everyday thing for the Forerunners. The Didact copies himself into Bornstellar with no problem. The Librarian does the computer equivalent of this on Requiem. So what is the exact nature of the Composer's main fault? Do the new bodies fall apart because the Flood's metaphysical aspect carries the infection over, or would they fall apart anyway without any Flood infection? One would assume it's the former, given how easy mind uploading is supposed to be to the Forerunners and how Chakas and Riser don't seem to suffer any ill effects despite living with their imprints for some time, but it's not that clear-cut.

While part of the Librarian's speech about the Composer's corrupting influence in Halo 4 can be understood as oversimplification and exaggeration for the sake of plot, there is one piece of evidence to suggest that the flaw is also with the Composer itself. On page 43 of Silentium, the Librarian states that the imprints stored in the devolved humans are kept dormant to avoid "Composer decay". Since said imprints were extracted from humans with no Flood infection present (the ones who surrendered at Charum Hakkor), this suggests that the decay is a fundamental flaw of the Composer and happens anyway whether the Flood is involved or not. But why would the Forerunners' state-of-the-art Flood treatment machine have a shortcoming the Forerunners have managed to overcome in the mechanisms they use in their mutations?

Furthermore, when the Librarian meets the imprinted Forthencho at the end of Silentium, she mentions that "Composer-gathered essences have been imprinted over living humans; and those essences are now rotting the bodies from within, maligned by the Flood parasite.". This suggests that the decay is the direct result of the Flood's corruption of the essences and not the Composer itself. The Librarian does, however, follow up with the statement "Such is the cruelty of the Composer; such is the barbarity of the Flood", which could suggest that the Composer plays a part in the decay along with the Flood. So perhaps the imprinted bodies decay faster if the Flood is involved, and any decay present without the Flood is much slower and more gradual (hence Chakas and Riser surviving for what appear to be several weeks without the decay taking effect). --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 03:43, 4 April 2014 (EDT)

The Composer's Collective
In Issue #9 of Escalation, Static Carillon says this about the composed population of New Phoenix: "Their memories are being added to the whole. As was, of course, the plan when the Composer was built. But they also bring terror. They bring fear. They bring rage and confusion. This is unacceptable."

Now, I'm not sure if 343i themselves are fully decided on what the plan with the Composer was given the conflicting origin stories in Silentium and the H4EVG, but I don't think what Static is saying here has come up before. What is "the whole"? It's obviously some form of collective intelligence comprised of absorbed consciousnesses (this is the first time we hear the Promethean bots have a gestalt intelligence, BTW) but since when was this the original plan with the Composers? Everything we've heard before suggests the Composer was a relatively straightforward tool to cut-and-paste your mind into a computer and then restore it into a cloned body. So where does the collective consciousness enter the equation?

And what about this part: "But they also bring terror. They bring fear. They bring rage and confusion. This is unacceptable." At first I thought Static is referring to the Prometheans — that they concretely, physically bring terror, fear, etc. But it seems to be referring to the New Phoenix victims' memories bringing those negative emotions to the nebulous "whole". Does this imply that the "whole" includes everyone "treated" by Composers, including the Forerunners who willingly underwent the procedure? But why would all Composer-processed minds be automatically uploaded into a singular collective? Again, I can understand the Knights and perhaps the other Promethean robots using a collective consciousness as it would only pronounce the irony of how they're basically a mechanical reflection of the Flood, but Static Carillon's line seems to indicate they're part of something bigger. Or do copies of the Knights' minds exist in both the individual Knights as well as the "whole" Static is talking about? We know composed essences can be copied, so it's possible. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 13:52, 31 August 2014 (EDT)


 * Assuming "the whole" is simply the gestalt of the Knights' essences, such a revelation makes perfect sense. After all, they would have been familiar with sharing sensory data; being part of a collective consciousness may not be as much of a shock to them as it would to other Forerunners, let alone human "conscripts". Perhaps Static Carillon means, "Look, your Prometheans may have been willing to get composed but enslaving humans is another story. The Omega Halo incident was bad enough but now you've made things even worse on the collective psyche." Granted, we know the Knights have some degree of individuality since and a rudimentary chain of command. This leads me to believe that the Knights (and perhaps all Promethean constructs, to a greater or lesser degree) rely on a centralized intelligence for general coordination but are directed at "ground level" by higher-ranking units.


 * Of course, the implication seems to be that all composed essences are uploaded to some sort of hive mind. There's nothing wrong with this idea on its own merits but it certainly seems to popped up out of nowhere. Maybe "the whole" is like a cloud server and (as you've mentioned) local copies may be imprinted on new mechanical or biological forms yet continue to exist as part of the collective. The notion that the Composer was created to help the Forerunners achieve immortality makes me think the concept (if not the actual design) existed in secret before the Flood showed up; it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say the Composer was merely repurposed for use against the parasite. Following this train of thought, uploading all composed essences into "the whole" could lead to an eternal utopia, so Static's line could refer to the original, pre-Flood intention for the Composer's being. Frankly, though, such a collective would fall easy prey to the logic plague. The Forerunners just couldn't win for losing. -- Our vengeance is at hand.  Gravemind.svg ( Talk to me. ) 16:55, 31 August 2014 (EDT)


 * While it's possible the Composer was originally created for purposes other than Flood defense, the original intention may also have been to fight the Flood on its own terms by creating a compound consciousness which would supposedly act as a harmonious reflection of the Gravemind, and hopefully be immune to the latter's persuasions. However, I wonder where the Domain would fit in this scheme since it played such a big role in Forerunner mysticism, and is already effectively the positive counterpart to the Gravemind. Wouldn't it be redundant (both from an in-universe and storytelling perspectives) to create another non-twisted version of the Gravemind when the Forerunners already have the Domain? Unless the idea with the Composer was to create a fully reliable and knowable system — the Domain was still full of unknowns, and from the way characters refer to it, the preservation of one's essence in there apparently involved an element of a "leap of faith" to it rather than the certainty you might get if you build your artificial heaven yourself. And in any case the Domain seemed to act more like a nirvana than a Western conception of a heaven.


 * Your theory about the Prometheans' high-level compound consciousness does make sense (and again, it works to highlight how they're not all that different from the Flood). What if the Knights' (and possibly other units') high-level coordination just taps into "the whole" for processing power just like the Gravemind uses individual minds as processing substrate that gives rise to its own intelligence? The Knights' essences don't even need to exist as copies — the same essences that are imprisoned in the Knights may form a component of the collective, just like every other composed mind in the whole. The Knights can simultaneously be individuals and extensions of a larger meta-consciousness. It also helps somewhat explain what use the Didact would have to a bunch of primitive, confused and angry human minds — the human essences contribute to the Knights more on a broader processing level rather than individually (where the human essence would form only the barest basis for the Knight's AI). Of course, those composed against their will would pollute the gestalt with their confusion and anger, which would likely end up making it more and more aggressive and insane as time goes by, but that isn't really something the Didact would care about. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 22:39, 31 August 2014 (EDT)


 * Perhaps "the whole" was meant to exist not as an alternative to the Domain but instead as a metaphorical island within it. EDIT: Apart from the Domain being destroyed, that is. If enough consciousnesses were merged maybe they could resist the esoteric quriks that made the network so unpredictable in the waning days of the ecumene. A good analogy would be the Warp in Warhammer 40,000, where enough psychic emanations gathered in the alternate dimension can manifest consciousness and even achieve apotheosis. It may not be so far fetched given the science-fantasy spin The Forerunner Saga has placed on the setting.


 * As for the Promethean Knights I basically imagine the geth or the Borg with a greater degree of autonomy. If Escalation #10 doesn't resolve the issue I may ask Catalog about it when the Interaction thread is unlocked. Granted, I wouldn't be surprised to get an evasive response that suggests more information is around the corner. It just seems like too big a revelation to simply leave by the wayside in later media. Time will tell, I suppose. -- Our vengeance is at hand. Gravemind.svg ( Talk to me. ) 23:15, 31 August 2014 (EDT)


 * It's certainly possible that the gestalt was meant to exist in the Domain — by the time the Composer was first created, the Forerunners would've considered the Domain as something eternal and probably couldn't even imagine it ever being destroyed, so using it in conjunction with the Composer to achieve a form of immortality makes a kind of sense from their perspective. Still, from the Forerunner Saga one gets the sense of the Forerunners as a civilization who really like their squishy biological forms as well as consistently interfering in galactic affairs so deliberately "subliming" into the Domain feels somewhat out of character for them, particularly if the Composer was first built before the Flood threat was even present. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 23:37, 31 August 2014 (EDT)