Forerunner


 * HCEA-Forerunner.png“We are Forerunners, guardians of all that exists. The roots of the galaxy have grown deep under our careful tending. Where there is life, the wisdom of our countless generations has saturated the soil. Our strength is a luminous sun towards which all intelligence blossoms and theeimpervious shelter beneath which it has prospered.” — The Ur-Didact

The Forerunners (Latin Primoris Prognatus meaning "first born") was once a highly advanced and ancient Tier 1 species whose empire, the Ecumene, was spread across three million fertile worlds in the Milky Way galaxy approximately 100,000 years ago. The Forerunners were the creators and builders of many significant installations, including the Halo Array, the Ark, and the Shield Worlds, as well as numerous lesser artifacts later found on many worlds.[citation needed]

The Forerunners had taken up a role as custodians of the galaxy and believed that the "Mantle of Responsibility," the center of their society and culture, had been passed down to them by the Precursors, an even more powerful race that preceded the Forerunner civilization. "Forerunner" is a literal translation of the species' name for themselves; they identified themselves as such because they believed that they held an impermanent place in the universe's Living Time and that they would be succeeded by other, better races. Before their disappearance from the galaxy, the Forerunners would name humanity their successors, identifying them with the title "Reclaimer."[citation needed]

The alien alliance known as the Covenant worshiped the Forerunners as gods, deriving much of their technology from Forerunner artifacts found throughout the galaxy, and believing any who defaced these relics to be Heretics.

Contents

 * History
 * Early History and Origins
 * Forerunner-Precursor war
 * Custodians of the Galaxy
 * Forerunner-Flood war
 * First Contact
 * The War
 * Firing the Halo Array
 * Physiology
 * Technology
 * Genetic Creations
 * Weaponry
 * Armor
 * Information Technology
 * Forerunner Astroengineering
 * Culture
 * Art and Architecture
 * Forerunner Glyphs and Symbols
 * Religious Inspiration
 * Trivia
 * Gallery
 * Sources
 * External links

Historyedit | edit source

 * “The Forerunners were wise, highly intelligent, noble beings and with a belief in justice, in peace, they bravely faced the adversary. They sought to sterilize it.” — Cortana on the Forerunners.

Early History and Originsedit | edit source
Around 15 million years BCE, the Precursors seeded the Forerunners on the world known as Ghibalb, described as a paradise, which would become their nascent homeworld. However, after the Forerunners' early experiments in stellar engineering ended in disaster, resulting in a series of novas in the Orion complex, the planet became desolate and scoured with radiation.

Forerunner-Precursor waredit | edit source

 * Main article: Forerunner-Precursor war

Eventually, the Forerunners rose up against their creators, the Precursors, as revenge for handing the Mantle of Responsibility to Humanity.

The Forerunners drove the Precursors out of the galaxy and followed them to Path Kethona (a galaxy in the local group) where they utterly destroyed the remaining Precursors, save for a few. The survivors of the expeditionary force then abandoned their ships and technology and settled on a small planet out of shame.[citation needed]

Custodians of the Galaxyedit | edit source
The Forerunners were a very advanced civilization, coming to power after the destruction of the Precursors, who were presumed to have created the Forerunners in order to continue the Mantle of Responsibility. Soon after, the Forerunners became the dominant species in the galaxy, their empire spanning over three million fertilized and inhabited worlds. The Forerunners reached the peak of their civilization approximately 150,000 BCE.

Their civilization was based around the Mantle of Responsibility, the belief that it was the Forerunners' duty to protect all life in the galaxy. They presumably monitored the evolution of other sentient species throughout the galaxy, intervening in ways that ensured their civilizations would follow paths of peace, free of conflict. One such occasion is the devolution of the human empire to prevent further conflict emanating from what they considered a "violent species." The Forerunners themselves were a race almost entirely without conflict, and at some point in their history reached a point of disarmament, believing they no longer needed weapons in their rule of the galaxy, which ultimately weakened them when the Flood attacked.

Forerunner-Flood waredit | edit source

 * Main article: Forerunner-Flood war

First Contactedit | edit source
Later in their history, Primary Pioneer Group, a Forerunner survey team searching for habitable planets landed on Seaward, designated G 617 g. When they landed, they came into contact with an extragalactic parasite known as the Flood. The group disappeared shortly after this, and communications were lost. Later, Advance Survey Team-Alpha, which was attached to the Primary Pioneer Group, was sent to investigate the disappearance of the Primary Pioneer Group on G 617 g. When they arrived on the planet, they discovered the Flood. The Forerunner-Flood war was about to begin.

The Waredit | edit source
After this first contact, the Forerunners failed to recognize the immediate danger that the Flood posed to the entire galaxy, and when they did eventually realize this, it was already too late to provide the containment necessary of stopping the spread. They underestimated the potential of the Flood to learn and adapt, believing it to be a non-sentient but highly contagious disease. As such, the limited attempt to contain the Flood was a failure, as the Forerunners tried methods more suited to disease control than warfare, trying to contain and quarantine the Flood rather than attack and destroy it outright. The Forerunners did not attempt a more candid and forceful form of physical warfare until later in the war, by which time it was too late.

When the Forerunners were unable to contain the Flood outbreak, the galaxy entered a state of war. During the 300 years of the conflict, the Forerunners studied the Flood in labs such as the gas mine located in the atmosphere of Threshold, looking for any exploitable weakness. As the Forerunners soon realized that conventional naval tactics were ineffective against the parasite's onslaught, they developed new weapons and tactics to combat the Flood. The Sentinels were deployed as a means of maintaining the Flood through surgical, localized tactics. The Forerunner fleet command even contemplated using naval battle groups to enact premature stellar collapse within compromised planetary systems, causing supernova to engulf entire worlds. However, as these tactics proved only to slow, but never stop the expansion of the Flood, the Forerunner leadership realized that the only way to stop the Flood was to deprive it of any and all hosts, thus eliminating its potential to grow. Eventually, the Forerunners created the Halo Array, a weapon of last resort designed to starve the Flood to death by killing all Sentient Beings with enough biomass to effectively sustain them.

Firing the Halo Arrayedit | edit source
At first, the Forerunners were reluctant to use the Array, believing that they should continue to embrace the Mantle of Responsibility and protect life rather than to destroy it. This led to great stretches of anguished debate and even civil war, but eventually, it was decided that the Array was the only means of successfully stopping the Flood threat. The Gravemind managed to convince a Contender-class AI, 05-032 032 Mendicant Bias, to unite with the Flood. Mendicant Bias soon led his massive fleet in an attack on the "Maginot Line," the final barrier between what the Forerunners could actively protect and what they were forced to cede to the Flood. At last, the Forerunners exhausted every alternative and activated the Halo Array, killing themselves and all sentient life of sufficient biomass in the Milky Way, with the exception of those species safely placed on the Ark.

According to 343 Guilty Spark, The Librarian is alive, and he knows where to find her. It has been said that the remaining Forerunners made an exodus out of the Milky Way Galaxy to which no one knows their current fate. This has also been said of the Precursors. After the Array was fired and the Flood had been eliminated, the Forerunners left behind an automated system of automatons, much like the Sentinels, and AIs to spearhead the reseeding of the galaxy with data logs, embryos, and specimens contained on Forerunner ships. The Sentinels sacrificed themselves in order to continue the planned activation of the array, with their last military presence and members of their parent species (Forerunners) defending the Ark until the Didact activated the Halo Array, cleansing the galaxy of the Flood.[citation needed]

Physiologyedit | edit source
The Forerunners were quite similar to humans, but also share traits with the San'Shyuum. The differences from either of these species is that Forerunners have a pale complexion and black sclera. As the Librarian and the Didact are Forerunners, a more accurate description can be drawn from them.[citation needed] Generally, all Forerunner were upright bipeds with two legs.

Forerunner customs required that they wear armor or combat skins at all times. Forerunner-manufactured armor protects its user both physically and medically, and impacts some of their biological attributes both positively and negatively, such as increased age/extended life among other races.

Forerunner mutation to rates, also affected the characteristics of a Forerunner; these traits apparently range from increased height to an additional thumb on each hand.[citation needed]

There were six known rates: the Lifeworkers, the Warrior-Servants, the Builders, the Miners, the Engineers and the Juridicals. Manipulars were juvenile Forerunners not yet mutated into a rate. Theoreticals were a rate of scientists that were dissolved after the Human-Forerunner war. Counting the Theoreticals, there were a total of seven rates.[citation needed]

The Forerunners appeared to be genetically related to the humans, possibly as they were both creations of the Precursors. This can be corroborated by the Iris Server-05 message about the humans providing "answers" to the Forerunner's own "mysteries," and 032 Mendicant Bias's own declaration in Halo: Contact Harvest. This also explains why the Prophets ordered the Covenant to exterminate humanity, knowing that they are the Forerunner's designated heirs and would undermine their power. Halo 3 and the Halo Encyclopedia provided further evidence of this as well.

Technologyedit | edit source
Forerunner technology was highly cultivated and progressive. They managed to create solidified surfaces out of meticulous energy, construct a Halo-wide teleportation grid, and create and utilize a number of other advanced machinery. Forerunner machinery consists of many sharp angles of a metallic like crystal reinforced on a molecular level. The Halo rings themselves, the Micro-Dyson Mark II sphere, which is connected through a portal to the shield world Onyx and the Ark, are above all others, the most significant pieces of Forerunner technology. The planet Onyx in particular demonstrates both their ability for engineering on a grand scale, and their near transcendent grasp of slipspace technology. The Forerunners can also "devolve" a species back to a primitive state. It is unknown how much of their technology is based on the technology of the Precursors, if any.

Covenant Luminaries (which are actually stolen Forerunner equipment designed to detect other Forerunner objects) can detect Humans, previously mislabeled as "Forerunner Artifacts," leading to the initial Human-Covenant contact which sparked a seemingly endless war.

Genetic Creationsedit | edit source
The Forerunners have thus far created a species: the Huragok. They are also known to have manipulated the genetics of other races such as the Thanolekgolo. Forerunners have the technology to reproduce entire individuals from encoded DNA/RNA/silicon samples in data streams.

Weaponryedit | edit source
Forerunner constructs and sentries use a broad variety of weapons, typically high-powered energy beams and hard light weapons. These weapons proved to be very effective when battling the Flood, burning Flood forms to the point that they cannot be revived by their compatriots. The Forerunners have also proven to be able to merge beams together into one stream to amplify its power. The Forerunners installed and constructed these intricate beam weapons inside their paradigm Arrays which allowed them to build an army of machines to battle the Flood without sending any Forerunner to the front lines. Forerunners evidently made active use of plasma weaponry as well; the Covenant's own weapons and technology are likely based on Forerunner artifacts.

The Sentinels wield orange-colored directed energy beams, used primarily for fighting the Flood. Sentinel Majors however, have a more powerful and accurate version of the beam, which sports superior energy output, at the cost of overheating issues. These more advanced energy beams are colored blue. All variants of these Sentinel Beams can be wielded by Humans and certain Covenant races.

Meanwhile, Enforcers are equipped with multiple packs of small grenades, or mortar-like explosives launched over the top of their shield. The Enforcer also boasts a pair of Pulse beams, which fire clusters of smaller red Needle-like projectiles or bolts of energy at an incredibly high rate of fire. These pulse beams are primarily used against infantry at close range. These mammoth constructs also are capable of lifting heavy armored vehicles, using some sort of magnetic or anti-gravity grapple, before crushing the target between their massive 'arms'. The Constructors' repair beam can also be considered a weapon, but with minimal damage output.

The Sentinels of Onyx had significantly more powerful weaponry. They were described to be a sphere surrounded by three floating "booms" or small pieces of armor that possessed powerful energy shields which would suddenly "pop" into place in order to deflect objects moving at high velocities. Their shields are not activated by slow-moving objects, however - Team Saber used this to their advantage to destroy one of the Sentinels with rocks. Their energy weapons are described as a single, slow-charging, golden beam that could melt straight through the SPI armor of the Spartan-IIIs. Linda-058 had also noted that one blast from these weapons was enough to drain the shields of her MJOLNIR Mk V armor. The Onyx Sentinels also have the ability to combine for different purposes, such as exponentially increasing their combat capabilities, or for large-scale excavation. One formation of these combined Sentinels was able to easily destroy two Covenant destroyers. However, it should be noted that the second Covenant Destroyer was caught off guard after a Slipspace jump, and the first one had its energy shields down in a gesture of peace, trying to initiate contact with the Forerunner constructs.

The Forerunners also constructed Automated Turrets that fire blue beams similar to those of Sentinel Majors. These turrets themselves resemble stripped-down Sentinels, and hover in mid-air, tracking enemy targets, but are otherwise immobile.

In Halo 3, it seemed that even the Monitors had the ability to defend themselves against the Flood using a focused beam similar to the Sentinel's beam, but much more powerful. 343 Guilty Spark displayed this ability during the Halo 3 missions: Floodgate, The Covenant, and Halo. The weapon was capable of draining the shields of a Spartan-II in one short-duration blast, and mortally wounding Sergeant Major Avery Johnson. It is also quite odd and puzzling as to why 2401 Penitent Tangent didn't use this ability against the Gravemind in Halo 2. It is assumed that the Gravemind is likely to have damaged 2401 Penitent Tangent when he captured the Monitor, disabling its beam weaponry. It could simply be that it was not equipped with one, although this is highly unlikely due to the importance of the monitors to ensure the Halo installation's upkeep.

Forerunners also wielded an as yet unnamed beam weapon.

In addition, the Forerunners also developed a number of hand-held weapons for use by infantry. These weapons included the Z-110 Directed Energy Pistol/Exotic, the Z-130 Directed Energy Automatic Weapon, the Z-180 Close Combat Rifle/Asymmetric Engagement Mitigator, the Z-250 Directed Energy Engagement Weapon, the Z-750 Special Application Sniper Rifle, the Z-390 High-Explosive Munitions Rifle, and the Z-040 Attenuation Field Generator/Localized.

Composers, devices that convert organic matter to digital information, could be used as weapons by the Forerunners as well.

Armoredit | edit source

 * Main article: Forerunner Armor

The Forerunner had their own style of armor, simply called Forerunner Armor, as well as a completely different type of apparel known as Combat Skin.

Forerunner armor protected its user both physically and medically and had a variety of capabilities, such as suspending its user if they were in a tough situation, could even provide nourishment for a time, and was one of the reasons Forerunner could live so long. Forerunner armor could connect to the Domain, the center of all Forerunner knowledge. In addition, armor was integrated with an Ancilla, the Forerunner term for artificial intelligence.

Information Technologyedit | edit source
The Forerunner also possessed advanced information technologies. The Domain was a massive network that the Forerunner used to keep track of all knowledge and information. The Z-9930 Information Vector Console, also known as a Terminal, was an interface device.

Forerunner Astroengineeringedit | edit source

 * Main article: Astroengineering

While the Forerunners' architectural and technological prowess is legendary among the Covenant and UNSC, their masterpieces also extended to the fields of stellar engineering. At least five Forerunner sites, the Shield 0459, Onyx, Requiem, the Ark, and the Micro Dyson Sphere that holds the Apex, made use of suns where none should exist. The Shield World existed permanently in slipspace, where solar systems outside of a Dyson Sphere cannot exist, and the Ark was located far outside of the galaxy where galactic material would have been insufficient to form the sun that illuminates the Ark. The sun at the center of the Dyson Sphere where the Apex was housed was abnormally small, in order to accommodate the planet-sized Dyson Sphere. Whether these suns are artificially engineered or simply moved from another star system by the Forerunners is unknown: either would have been an enormous technological achievement.

Another known Shield World is the planet discovered by the UNSC Spirit of Fire. This world had an outer crust like Onyx, but its inner Dyson sphere was accessed through a long narrow tunnel hidden under one of the planet's oceans. Once through the tunnel, the Spirit of Fire had to pass through several "cleansing rings" in order to make it to the center of the planet. This Dyson sphere, unlike the Onyx Dyson sphere, was not separated in slipspace but was actually constructed on what appeared to be the hollowed out interior of the planet. This sphere seemed to have had an artificially created sun like the one on the Ark.

The Ark has a "flower head" shape.