Flood: Difference between revisions

<center>''Were you looking for the novel [[Halo: The Flood]], or [[The Flood (level)|The Flood]], the ninth level in [[Halo Wars]]?''</center>

{{Species Infobox

|othernames=

*"Flood" ([[human]] and [[Covenant Empire|Covenant]])   

===Forerunner-Flood war===

{{main|Forerunner-Flood war}}

{{quote|It fed on intelligent life and in doing so, became ever more intelligent itself. The Flood was unique; it used [[Forerunners|their]] very strength against them.|Cortana on the Forerunner-Flood War.}}

{{main|Battle of Installation 04}}

====Release====

{{Quote|The only way to stop the Flood is to starve them to death.|[[Cortana]] to [[John 117]] and [[343 Guilty Spark]].}}

Although the first firing of the Halo Array starved the Flood that were at large in the galaxy, samples of Flood specimens were kept alive (perhaps in stasis) on various Forerunner outposts for research and scientific study. One such research site was located on [[Installation 04]]. This proved to be a grave mistake, as both humanity and the Covenant stumbled upon the abandoned ring thousands of years after the firing of the Array. Cortana, aboard the {{UNSCShip|Pillar of Autumn}}, made what was presumed to be a "blind" jump through Slipspace (although it was later revealed that she used translated co-ordinates from a Forerunner artifact found on [[Sigma Octanus IV]]) to evade Covenant pursuers. This led both groups to Installation 04, and in turn, the Flood that were kept there. After the crash of the ''Pillar of Autumn'' on the Halo Ring, the surviving crewmembers dug in for what they believed would be a long and brutal guerrilla campaign against the Covenant forces on Halo.  

====Assault====

After the Flood's escape, the Covenant forces across [[Installation 04]] were overwhelmed by the Flood's assault. While the Covenant were occasionally able to hold the line by using vehicular and air support, most of the weaker Covenant soldiers such as [[Unggoy]] and [[Kig-yar]] succumbed easily to the Flood, and the few Sangheili who remained were outnumbered and infected. The UNSC, having a much smaller presence on the installation, found out about the Flood's might a short while later, when an [[Orbital Drop Shock Trooper|ODST]] force engaged with the Covenant near [[Alpha Base (Installation 04)|Alpha Base]], was ambushed by the Flood and suffered heavy casualties. However, one of the attacking combat forms, [[Private First Class|PFC]] [[Wallace A. Jenkins]], who was one of the Marines in the original expeditionary mission to the supposed arms cache, was infected by a weak and elderly infection form whose powers of infection had been dulled by centuries of hibernation, making Jenkins' transformation into a combat form incomplete. Jenkins was still able to resist the pervasive Flood entity in his mind, and although incapable of articulate speech and with a physiologically devastated body, Jenkins was still able to betray the Flood through hand gestures during an interrogation with [[Major]] [[Antonio Silva]], informing the UNSC Marine battalion that the Flood planned to assault the UNSC base from a series of underground catacombs underneath their base. In response to this intelligence, the UNSC moved to secure them, and prevented the Flood from staging another attack.

====Defeat====

The Flood appeared to be interested in seizing space-capable vessels, in the hope of spreading itself away from the Installation and into the stars: they attacked the ''Pillar of Autumn'' and CCS ''[[Truth and Reconciliation]]'', for this reason. After the UNSC cruiser's crash-landing onto the ring, and after engaging over fifteen enemy warships, it had been taken by the Covenant, although a UNSC raid had managed to temporarily retake the hull. On the third and final day of the Battle of Installation 04, however, the Covenant were in control of the crashed warship when a Covenant patrol was ambushed by the Flood and infected; when it returned to the vessel, the Covenant garrison was attacked by Elite combat forms. The combat forms were able to scatter before they could all be destroyed, and a steady trickle of Flood continued to enter the Pillar of Autumn through vents and openings in the hull, waging a tedious guerrilla battle against the Covenant security force on board.

===Changes from ''Halo 3'' to ''Halo Wars''===

''Significant changes to the Flood's general existence were necessary due to the change of genre from first-person shooter to real-time strategy game. These are as follows.''

*Infection forms no longer push back the heads of their Elite victims; it appears as though the Flood actually use the hosts' heads. In addition, combat forms have more tentacles than before; they resemble spikes rather than flexible appendages.

*Grunts and Jackals can be converted to combat forms.