Domain

"The records don't always stay the same. Sometimes they change. It is not known why." "Like real memories."

- Bornstellar-Makes-Eternal-Lasting and Chakas discussing the Domain

The Domain was a vast information network used by the Forerunners. Highly central to Forerunner society and culture, it contained the ancestral records and all knowledge of the Forerunner civilization.

Overview
In Forerunner society, Haruspis and its associates were individuals entrusted with studying the Domain and occasionally directing individuals, such as Juridicals, to specific topics of knowledge found inside. Forerunners in meditative xankara within a Cryptum were in constant contact with the Domain and were able to explore it much more clearly than when awake. The Domain was central in major Council proceedings, such as a political trial. Among other things, it was used by the judges to store archival and accounting material, assess precedent, and to verify witnesses' testimonies. Contender-class ancillas such as 05-032 Mendicant Bias were connected to the Domain upon their activation.

There was a mysterious quality to the Domain; its exact nature or origin remained largely nebulous even to Forerunners. The Domain was apparently not located within normal space-time, or tied to any particular location or system, as mature Forerunners were able to connect to the Domain through their personal armor anywhere, regardless of distance. Sometimes, the records contained within the Domain changed for an unknown reason. The changes were regarded as sacred, and were never reversed or corrected. Likewise, over long periods of time, information in the Domain changed to ultimately become unintelligible to Forerunners. However, due to these anomalies, the Domain was not commonly used as means of communication; messages could be inexplicably altered on the way. The Domain appeared to be somehow related to a Forerunner's subconscious; according to an ancilla, Forerunner scholars theorized that the dreams of early Forerunners accessed the "ground" that the Domain is built upon. The Didact mentioned that that the Domain sometimes had a "broken-mirror aspect", making it appear as if one's experience of visiting the Domain was the product of their own mind.

Further adding to its mystical nature is that in some cases, the use of an armor's interface was not even necessary to contact the Domain; when Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting approached Janjur Qom, the Domain opened to him for a brief instant; at first he described the experience as "deep" and "appropriately shapeless", but it soon took form, shaping into a coherent whole around his consciousness. Through this experience, Bornstellar felt the essences of everyone who had ever visited the Domain reach out to him, urging him to preserve the history of the Forerunners which would soon come to an end. When the Didact confronted his main opponent, Forthencho, the Lord of Admirals after the final battle for Charum Hakkor, he mentioned that "But to all of us there is a time like this, when the Domain seeks to confirm our essences, and for you, that time is now", possibly referring to Forthencho's impending death.

During the final years of the Forerunner-Flood war circa 100,000 BCE, the Domain suffered frequent outages, often becoming inaccessible for all Forerunners. This was a result of the Halo Array being moved across the galaxy, and the resulting buildup of space-time debt due to the enormous amounts of particle reconciliation required to correct the breaches in causality. By the last year of the conflict, the Domain had become completely inaccessible to Forerunners and ancillas.

There is evidence to suggest that the Domain was in fact a conscious entity in itself. When accessed by a Juridical looking for information on the Precursors, the Domain evidently wished to testify to the Juridical, who disbelievingly asserted that the Domain was in no way a sentient being. Haruspis rebuked the Juridical for his ignorance on the nature of the Domain, just before the Domain itself overwhelmed the Juridical with knowledge. At the close of the Flood war, the Gravemind conveyed a message to the Librarian via the essence of Forthencho, revealing the true nature of the Domain: once created by the Precursors to contain a hundred billion years' worth of knowledge they had collected, it was stored in Precursor architecture across the galaxy. The Domain was, essentially, the mythical Organon. By activating the Halo Array - which would destroy all Precursor creations by nullifying their neural physics - it would be ensured that the Forerunners' history would be lost.

Despite the Gravemind's claim, something of the Domain appeared to survive the activation of the Halo Array. In 2557, during their time on Requiem, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and Cortana were able to partially access the Domain via local terminal nodes, learning more about the tale of the Didact and the Librarian. However, Cortana mentioned that the terminal was "caught in a loop" trying to access the Domain, suggesting that the Domain itself was actually unavailable and the fragments viewed on Requiem were hosted locally in the terminals themselves.

Trivia

 * The Domain serves as the fictional basis for the terminals in Halo 4.
 * The Domain bears conceptual similarities to the Void Which Binds, a quantum information storage medium featured in Dan Simmon's science-fiction series The Hyperion Cantos.
 * The Domain also has resemblance to the theory of the Akashic records, a Hindu belief that all knowledge, past, present, and future, is archived on another plane of existence that only a select few can access.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Cryptum
 * Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
 * Terminals
 * Halo: Primordium
 * Halo 4
 * Halo: Silentium