Florian

The Florians were a people of a diminutive species of human taxonomically referred to as Homo floresiensis and called chamanune (plural chamanush) by contemporary humans themselves.

History
They were native to Earth and part of humanity's contemporary civilization shared by other human and hominid species before the firing of the Halo Array. Despite their small size, they were generally respected by other humans and were allowed to go about their own business; it was told that they banded together and took vengeance on those who harmed them. The Florian Riser, a member of a group of Florians living in the Marontik area, served as a guide to Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting, a young Forerunner looking for Precursor artifacts. The Librarian had imprinted Riser's ancestors with a geas that made the subsequent generations seek a way to bypass the defenses around the Didact's Cryptum in the Djamonkin Crater.

In the reintroduction stage of the Lifeworkers' Conservation Measure, the species was relocated to several islands by the new Lifeshaper, Chant-to-Green, at Riser's suggestion; these islands included Flores in Indonesia and Hawaii. The species is known to have survived up until around 13,000 BCE and possibly as recently as 10,000 BCE, living contemporaneously with "modern" humans, Homo sapiens. Though Florians are believed to have gone extinct, various folktales on the islands they used to inhabit appear to be based on them, including the small-sized people known as Menehune in Hawaiian mythology.

Anatomy and physiology
They possessed more "primitive" characteristics than modern humans, including a reduced mandible, lacking a chin, and a smaller cranial capacity and proportionally smaller brain, though were still intelligent. Their most outstanding feature was their small stature, standing at a little over a meter tall. Chamanush were remarkably long-lived; Riser was around 200 years old when he met Bornstellar, and he was still "just a youngster" according to Chakas. At least Florian males were remarkably hirsute, with most of their bodies and faces covered in fur-like hair. They were noted for their keen sense of smell in comparison to modern humans.

The Didact described the Florians as "peaceful, yet full of cleverness" and asked them to be preserved following the human-Forerunner wars. After the war, Florians were favored by the Forerunners as a servant species, often amusing and instructing their young. Family and ancestry were noted to be important in Florian culture. It was said that unlike hamanush, chamanush "lived with ancestors in their heads", suggesting that they may have possessed a special connection to their ancestors, possibly a genetic memory of some kind. This may have been due to the influence of the Librarian.

Communication and naming
Besides regular speech, the Florians living circa 100,000 BCE communicated in a variety of ways, including "stare-whistle" and "click-song"; clicking noises made with their tongue and cheeks. When communicating in regular speech, Florians spoke in a truncated, simplistic manner; however, their own language, complemented by various gestures and clicking sounds, was highly elegant and complex, including, among other traits, a large amount of inflections and declensions, as well as verb tenses which recognized thirteen different grammatic genders and four directions of time.

The Florian naming system was notably complex, with an individual having a family name, a personal name, and a considerably longer "long name"; for example, Riser's family name was "Day-Chaser", his personal name "Morning Riser", and his long name "Day-Chaser Makes Paths Long-stretch Morning Riser". However, they were typically only called by their first name and rarely revealed their full names to outsiders.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Cryptum
 * Halo: Primordium
 * Halo: Silentium
 * Halo: Rebirth