Talk:Forerunner-Precursor war

Plausibility

Am I the only one who finds this whole "Forerunners wiped out the Precursors" thing very implausible? First, I'm baffled as to why everyone assumes that the single line of "I am the last of those your kind rose up against and ruthlessly destroyed" equates to "The Forerunners wiped out the Precursors in a massive war". What people seem to be forgetting is that Precursors were technologically advanced to the point of near-godhood, being worshiped by the Forerunners as the prime example of life. How could the Forerunners, an tiny, insignificant race in comparison, conceivably wage war against such a species, let alone win and wipe them from the universe? I would take the Prisoner's words with a pinch of salt; it might claim that it is the last Precursor, that doesn't mean it is. If the implications that the Prisoner is in some way related to Gravemind are true, even more so. Just my two cents on the whole affair. - Halo-343 (Talk) 17:48, 6 March 2011 (EST)

Given that this isn't the first war in Halo where a technologically inferior race defeated a superior one... Well, it's true that to me too it sounds implausible, but I don't own the book, and from the looks of here it sounds like it was just mentioned once in a throwaway line. Hopefully they'll explain more about how that could happen, because their own technogical divide here looks to be very wide indeed. Tuckerscreator^(stalk) 18:12, 6 March 2011 (EST)

Arrogance is the one variable that people do not account for. Especially their own.

We see this happen in the Forerunner-Flood War - it isn't the Flood's abilities that overwhelm the Forerunners, though they were certainly formidible. It was the fact that the Forerunners were overconfident, and content at first to study their enemy, comfortable in the knowledge that a counter-weapon would be found. It was not, and they would pay for their arrogance with their lives, and the lives of trillions of sentients. We see it again in the Human-Covenant War. The arrogance of the Prophets in their puritanical interpretation of the Great Journey, drove the Covenant to civil war just as they were on the verge of absolute victory.

The Precursors were truly great. Their ego's were probably proportionally enormous, and as the old adage goes - the bigger they are, the harder they fall. -- Specops306 ^{Autocrat Qur'a 'Morhek} 22:55, 6 March 2011 (EST)

Providing a look back, and for anyone who is curious: the final book in the Forerunner trilogy confirms that, yes, the Forerunners rose up and destroyed (nearly) the Precursors; however, the reasoning is very much up in the air. --SNovah (talk) 01:10, 3 October 2013 (EDT)

Deletion Request

We literally know NOTHING about this. We don't even know that it was a war. They coulda poisoned all of their food, or stopped their reproduction with a genophage-like thing. We know nothing about this and all of the things in this article can be described on their own pages... Vegerot goes RAWR! Vegerot (talk) 11:13, 16 January 2012 (EST)!

Cause for war and inconsistencies

Not sure where else to put this, but I'd like to spark a discussion, and I certainly don't want to put speculation on the page itself, but I have two separate theories on this war and, indirectly, the origin of the Flood.

Theory 1: the Gravemind/Primordial could be telling the truth when they speak to the Ur-Didact (and to Bornstellar/IsoDidact): the Precursors created a number of species to find one that would be worthy of inheriting the Mantle, and the Forerunners couldn't accept that it wouldn't be them, rose up, and destroyed a pacifistic race/entity.

The main issue I see with this is the source: only the Primordial and Graveminds claim this is what happened and they are not in the habit of being truthful. On the other hand, I'm unaware of any instance where they outright lie. It also strikes me as unusual that the Forerunner would create literally hundreds of thousands of ships and cross galaxies simply because they were being the high-tech version of spoiled brats.

Theory 2: The Precursors did create many species, searching for worthy ones to raise. When it became clear that the Forerunners were unworthy of being holders of the Mantle, the Precursors sought to "wipe the slate" and start over. The Forerunners reacted as any species would and defended themselves.

This seems to be the most likely to me: the archaic Forerunners encountered by the Librarian in Path Kethona do not seem to run from their history. If they were in fact simply throwing a tantrum, I feel the Librarian would have revealed this, demoralizing or not; instead, it seems to mesh in very well with what occurred in the Forerunner-Human war: the Forerunners initially defended themselves and finally went to a point of no return, hunting the Precursors down to Path Kethona and purging them; some believed this to be overkill or unnecessary and protested, and were killed or stranded on the world the Librarian found. Either way, what the Librarian found reinforced at least the belief that the Forerunners faced annihilation by the Precursors.

The actual tale is also implied by Bornstellar in Cryptum as a sort of "fairy tale" about the Forerunner's creation.

A primary issue is that there is no evidence that the Precursors ever fought back; this lends some immediate credence to the Gravemind's claim that the Precursors were pacifistic, or, as it claimed, amazed at the destruction. However, more relevant is how the Flood and Precursors relate to each other.

Primordium reveals that the Primordial was found, seemingly sealed in a Precursor device; however, it is later implied that it might have been an ancient Forerunner cage. Either way, it doesn't match up with the narrative provided by both sides. While the star roads and architecture of the Precursors were seemingly indestructible, the Primordial clearly was not. It doesn't add up for either story that it would spared unless something else was going on. Additionally, the Primordial reveals that it was not, in fact, a "true" Precursor but carried their memories and was in fact a composite of several creatures; given that the claim is that the powder that would become the Flood was corrupted over millions of years, it is very strange that something that closely resembles an advanced Flood form seemingly dates from the time when the Precursors were just beginning to change into what would become the Flood.

The secondary issue, of course, is the war's impact on humanity: the Precursors supposedly fled beyond the outer arms of the galaxy. Humanity, which is claimed to be favored in Theory 1, is said in Silentium (Librarian's testimony), to have settled heavily in the same regions where the Flood would first appear and were initially quarantined and fought. They settled among Precursor ruins and fought the Flood alongside the San'Shyuum and were given the illusion of being victorious.

I'd like to see if anybody else sees the same inconsistencies I do, or different ones. I won't go on about possible theories, but I will say that I don't believe the Forerunner-Precursor war was a straight black-and-white affair. The imprisoning of the Primordial and the tendency of humanity to settle in a place that would bear the brunt of the first Flood invasions and infestations seems strangely coincidental. --SNovah (talk) 01:39, 3 October 2013 (EDT)

A large portion of the inconsistent bits are probably intentional, to preserve a certain sense of mystery and ambiguity regarding the Precursors (and to leave room for future fictional expansion). However, I do agree that there seems to be more to the story than what's explicitly stated. Specifically in regards to the Primordial and its nature. It does indeed appear to be a composite being, yet distinct from a "modern" Flood Gravemind (in Primordium, it's said that there was ambiguity as to its nature among Forerunner researchers; if it were indeed a Flood form, I think anyone would be able to see that). Likewise, the IsoDidact asserts (based on what the Librarian had told him?) that the Precursors at the time of the Forerunners' uprising were unlike the Primordial, so we know the entity wasn't one of their original forms.

In Silentium, the Gravemind states that the Primordial "arrived" in the margins of the galaxy nine million years before, a million years after the Forerunners destroyed the Precursors. Were the Precursors hunted for a million years or was this one preserved by the Forerunners after the war in some other state, only to be later sealed in the capsule? Or was there something else that happened in the interim - could it be that the Flood's first emergence occurred much earlier than we know? The Primordial claims that a few Precursors fled beyond the Forerunners' reach and that "creation continued." The Gravemind says that the Precursors saw what the Flood did "and found it good" (although this could also have been after they had become the Flood themselves). The Ur-Didact also states that the Graveminds have advanced "far beyond the Primordial", suggesting that the entity was in fact an earlier (or primordial, if you will) form of Gravemind.

What I'm getting at is the possibility that there was an earlier form of the Flood that emerged around a million years after the Forerunners wiped out the Precursors - all the while a group of surviving Precursors observed and manipulated the events from behind the scenes. Maybe the powder got corrupted over just one million years, and after realizing this the surviving Precursors saw it as a serendipitous discovery rather than a failure. I could even see there being some form of disagreement at this point - maybe it was just the dominant "faction" of Precursors that accepted and embraced the Flood? They would've made a series of experiments on the new lifeform to infuse their own consciousness into it; the Primordial would've been the spawn of such an experiment. With their expertise in all things living, the last Precursors would've made improvements to the early Flood, altering it to be more effective and suited for their plan (hence explaining why the Forerunners didn't recognize the Primordial as a Flood form with definite certainty), and then sent the powder-bearing ships on a long trip through the intergalactic gulf between Path Kethona and the Milky Way; this was perhaps their last act before the Forerunners discovered and eliminated them, apart from the Primordial.

Of course, this is all too wild to be treated as factual, but it would explain the Primordial's origin. As for who struck first in the Forerunner/Precursor conflict, the IsoDidact firmly believed that the Precursors planned to end the Forerunners first. He, in turn, apparently gets his info from the Librarian who was connected to the closest thing there is to a first-hand source (apart from the Gravemind, whose motivations are questionable to say the least) so I'm leaning towards Option 2 as the more probable one. --Jugus (Talk | Contribs) 01:26, 4 October 2013 (EDT)

Well, I'll freely admit that most of the omissions seem deliberately intentional, using the unreliable narrator excuse: we really have no idea how sincere anyone was being during any of the Forerunner trilogy, or how much was "lost" (given that the entirety of the stories was, from an in-universe perspective, recovered and translated by ONI personnel).

I do, however, like the idea of the Precursor's not all having become or assimilated with the Flood; while obviously, as you said, it's all wild conjecture at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if some of your theory regarding the Precursor's experimenting with the Flood is at least partially true (assuming that the fiction which would confirm or deny it has been written yet). Primarily, the idea of Precursors experimenting with "proto-Flood" and having created the Primordial fits in very well with what has actually been said.

At this point, my primary thought in regards to the Flood is the origin of the ships containing the powder, as no-one mentions any similarity to any known design, and it seems unlikely that the Precursors actually used mechanical transportation; and in reference to the Primordial being an experimental predecessor for the Flood, there again is the issue of where its original cage came from.

For that reason, I greatly like the idea of there having been differing Precursor factions for this reason: if we assume that the Primordial was not captured and imprisoned by the Forerunner, that leaves either other Precursors, or an extragalactic origin, assuming there was no other race of comparative technology and ability in the Milky Way at that time.

In relation to my original line of thought, after a few re-reads of the trilogy, I'm more or less convinced that, regardless of the Primordial and Gravemind's interpretation, the IsoDidact and Librarian are the closest to the truth: I just don't believe that their sources have any particular reason to lie about why the "war" began.

Although, I am still very curious as to why there was explicit mention given to the fact that humanity spread along the galactic rim, where it would absorb the initial attacks by the Flood. I really feel there's more to that story that just didn't have time to be told, or is being saved for later. SNovah (talk) 00:30, 15 February 2014 (EST)

Forerunner Armada

When the Librarian visited Path Kethona, she stumbled across the remnants of the Forerunner armada used to annihilate the Precursors. Omega Halo was fired in that direction, so the Forerunners there may or may not be dead, but that Armada is likely still floating along in space. Could that Armada be found by humans or Mdama? Each side has half of the Janus Key. Though whether or not the Forerunners added those ships to the Janus Key is entirely up for speculation. Azekual (talk) 06:00, 22 June 2014 (EDT)

Needs updating with info from Mythos

This page needs to be updated with info from Mythos which gave a little insight to the war. Basically the Forerunners cklaimed the Mantle over 10 million years ago after the Precursors left the galaxy upon seeding it with life. This made them arrogant. The Precursors saw this, decided to return to the galaxy, strip the Forerunners of the Mantle, wipe out the Forerunners and give the Mantle to another race they found worthy. Forerunners found out and sent a fleet to wipe the Precursors out.