Exalted Obliteration's board-to-board with Braidenvl

Brilliant! Ultimately, the purpose of the Mantle is to bring about unity and harmony among all life. That is exactly what the Flood seek to accomplish, albeit in a rather unpleasant, undesirable, and forceful manner. Throughout "Halo 2", "Halo 3", and "Human Weakness", the Gravemind addresses this fact; it frequently refers to such concepts - though not always verbatim - as peace, unity, and transcendence. Could the Flood be the ultimate manifestation of the Mantle? Is it a weapon or some other experiment created by the Precursors? Is the Flood the modern form of the Precursors, the product of their "transendence"? The appearance of the Flood in the Milky Way is certainly not a fluke. Whatever the Precursors' "answer" is, we know that it is so terrible that those who learned of it - with the exception of the Didact - went mad and killed themselves. I definitely can't wait for the next installment of the Forerunner Saga.

Well said, Braidenvl. Time will tell how things turn out, though I must say that I am looking forward to this comic's further serialization. In any event, when all is said and done, it will be possible to probably put together a timeline of developments in this particular generation of MJOLNIR armor.

On another note, I appreciated your ideas about the Flood's secondary infection capabilities, and the results of that said process. Good indications of that were not only the infected animals in Halo Wars, but also the Sangheili Kusovai from the graphic novel, and what was happening to the Prophet of Truth up to his execution at the hands of Thel'Vadam.

Halo: Cryptum seems to at least mention this as well, for when the events surrounding Humanity's and the San'Shyuum's history with the parasite were revealed, the Flood operated as more of a traditional behavior and partially transformation-capable "zombie plague" rather than the parasitic onslaught that we are used to. It was only after huge numbers of Humans, San'Shyuum, and various animal species had been infected, did the infected begin to transform into an array of different Flood forms.

Even then, the book didn't necessarily specify what specific forms were involved, only saying that these forms were improved entities specialized to consume, gather, and absorb. It's not clear whether or not these forms were the now well-known Feral Stage forms, or instead things akin to what we seen in Halo Wars, which were partially transformed life forms, quite likely from spore infection and the Flood's control of the Shield World's biosphere.

The other mentions of unspecified Flood forms from Cryptum came from Bornstellar's/Didact's discovery of the Flood's return 300 years prior. It was stated there that the Flood had been encountered in 'new, unexpected' forms. Again, it is not clear if these forms are the familiar Infection, Combat, Carrier, Pure, Proto-Gravemind, and Gravemind Forms alongside the spore-infected entities, or if these are the highly diverse types seen in Origins Part 1.

If the familiar forms are indeed the new, unexpected types, then that would suggest that the Flood have an exponentially vaster array of forms and abilities at their/its disposal. Perhaps the Flood over time cycle through the specific forms they use, or modify them on the fly and depending upon the circumstances that they are in? It might help explain why we see flying versions of Infection Forms and other variants, alongside the gargauntuan entities and the other miscellaneous forms during the Forerunner's era, but not during the resurgence events seen in the games.

Perhaps they fell out of favor for the Flood, who opted instead to go for a more streamlined arsenal, as seen in their activities on the Halos and the Ark. As for the Shield World, those Flood were known to have been on that planet for thousands of years, according to the February 2009 issue of Gamepro, which specifically described the skirmish/multiplayer map "Release." In that segment, the article asked what the Flood would do if they were in full, long-term control of a planetary biosphere, and what would they do to entities like trees if they were not able to get space-faring, sentient life forms.

That would help explain why the Flood had so many different varieties of stationary hive structures that are not seen elsewhere, and why the extra mobile forms showed little of the more traditional infection characteristics that would be seen if they had been taken by Infection Forms. These forms and structures could very well be the product of centuries of Flood manipulation of the Shield World's external biosphere, as the animal forms show generalized, moderate mutation from Flood spores and genetic material, not that dissimilar to what happened to the Pheru millenia before.

When you combine their more familiar and secondary infection capabilities, it is indeed very clear why the Forerunners considered the Flood so dangerous. The partial mutation induced by airborne spores and gene fragments is bad enough, but the most horrific type of infection comes from the more dedicated types of infection. The structures created within the host organism by an Infection Form are pretty nasty, as the host's original biomass decays and falls away from the newer implements grown from within via the Flood's genetic and cellular-level consumption.

Its pretty incredible that the Flood are so versatile, from genetic mutation to parasitic, body-controlling growths, all the way up to a synchronized, collective intelligence and entities formed entirely from reengineered bone and Flood cells.

And there's more too. It seems that the Flood are connected to Precursors themselves. In that case, I suspect that the Flood are not weapon created by the Precursors, but rather an at least partially-influenced life form serving an entirely different purpose altogether. The Charum Hakkor captive told Didact that their "answer was at hand."

But what was that answer? Was it the arrival of the Flood, the Forerunner's eventual downfall, or something else entirely? Perhaps the Flood are, in very obtuse and bizzare way, the ultimate manifestation of the Mantle itself; all life forms throughout the universe are brought together, nurtured, uplifted, and unified as a synchronized, harmonious whole.

Perhaps the Precursors also intended to transform themselves into a new form of life for the aforementioned purpose, and the Flood are simply the byeproduct of that. When one takes into account the Flood's seeming ideological motivations, as seen with the Gravemind's discussions with Mendicant Bias, then it may not be so far-fetched.

Doesn't the Gravemind's description of bringing peace, joy, comfort, etc. to the wanting inhabitants of the Milky Way sound a lot like some of the goals of the Mantle? How does the Mantle not bring such results, even if it is fundamentally different from the Flood's goals?

I had already seen those images, though, until you mentioned it, I had not noticed the superficial differences in the armor that they depict. I would say that the differences in the helmets seen on the main cover are due to artistic license; the "Fall of Reach" comic has a lot of that. I only see resemblance to the Mark V helmet from "Halo 3" with the SPARTAN on the left; perhaps "Halo 3"'s depiction of the Mark V helmet was more convenient to reference. Of course, the Mark VI's is universally recognizable, so perhaps that is why the prongs look the way they do. The shoulder pauldrons, on the other hand, are clearly different; they remind of the blown-out sketches in Halsey's journal, which depict Mark IV suits whose components are more rounded than those of any field-issued iteration. The crotch armor is also less detailed.

As we both know, the Mark IV's external appearance is irrelevant, as the internal components are what matters. However, I would say that the armor featured on the main cover is a precursor of Red Team's/Cal's armor type. If this is so, we now know of five major Mark IV configurations: the core suit, the "Halo Wars" model, Gray Team's model, the "Package" model, and the one seen on the cover of "Fall of Reach - Covenant". It is also possible that the Mark IV that Halsey sketched in her journal is yet another model. Perhaps 343 Industries will canonize the Mark IV model seen in the "Halo Wars" announcement trailer, as well.

The Issue 1 cover is a different story. John's helmet resembles the Mark V helmet seen on the cover of the 2010 version of "The Flood", as well as the Mark IV helmet seen in "The Package". I'd imagine that the story proper will feature the Red Team style armor, or something close to it, as shown on the main cover, but perhaps the suit from the second image will be shown as well. We'll just have to wait for the issue to be released to find out.

I'd have to agree with your thoughts on hard light. If one can create such a "hardened" mass in the way that we discussed, then appyling a wide range of optical methods, including holography, is a trivial matter. Changing the captive particles to refract light in different ways would be easily achievable once one has the process going.

We can do the same with manipulations of things like water vapor and holograms, so it would be effortless for the Forerunners. Those hardened masses of light and gas are also noted to possess stupendous tensile strengths, as was shown when the slipspace portals and the extra Halos were subject to incredible strain. Who knows what else they could do with Hard Light; I can see why 343 and Greg Bear are enamored with it- its pretty darn cool.

Oh, and before I forget, I made an interesting discovery regarding what is now a dead topic; the first field-deployed MJOLNIR Mark IV suits. If you pop in "Halo: Fall of Reach Covenant" into google image search, you will find two pictures showing MJOLNIR armor. The first is a colored version of the image in this site's article on the topic, and the second shows a Spartan, likely John-117, firing an MA5B assault rifle into a hole in the side of a particular Covenant ship.

As you are undoubtedly aware of, the first image shows suits strongly resembling the ones used by Red Team in Halo Wars, but that isn't entirely true. For starters, the helmets these three Spartans are wearing are more like the Halo 3 iteration of the Mark V helmet, and the pauldrons seem to be more rounded than even the Red Team suit's doubled right-should pauldron.

There are other subtle differences between those suits and the Halo Wars ones, which go beyond just mere artistic style distinctions. The comic cover suits have their upper helmet portions more like the Mark VI, almost like a kind of generic hybrid between Marks V and VI helmets. The second image seems to show the Spartan in Mark VI style armor, but if you look carefully, it is clearly not the case; the Helmet is simply turned at a downward angle, and the tops of the vents are visible, having been covered by the angular, partially-curved chest piece.

So from these two images, it seems clear about what the first MJOLNIR suits were actually like: generic, more basic versions of the physically more elaborate suits used six years later by Red Team and Team Omega at Harvest and Arcadia. These starting suits are not the ones that are shown in that schematic from Dr. Halsey's journal, which is likely an earlier prototype, and not the suits issued at Chi Ceti IV.

Even the suit shown with the sophisticated movement structures in the journal is not the baseline either, but yet another structural configuration variant, just like Red Teams and the proto-Mark V ones used by Grey Team. That seems to be one of the defining features of the Mark IV generation: there were as many structural configuration developments as there were helmet and attachment-based variations, and it took them until the mid-2540's to find the best forms for internal hardware and physical structures.

In fact, on the Mark IV article citations section, there is an easily-missed one which involves a statement from Frank O'Connor made in the summer, stating the precise identities of the Red Team and Gray Team suits; both are simple, structural configuration variants of the core MJOLNIR Mark IV model. That brief but informative statement seems to have echoed to these new images, showing us a now very complete picture of the Mark IV line's development.

I certainly agree with your theories about the Flood. I've never thought of the Flood gradually replacing the host's biomass with its own, but it makes a great deal of sense. I agree that carrier forms are an advanced representation of this process - a distorted mass of mutated flesh and tendrils. I would say that larger forms, such as the Gravemind and the monstrosities from Origins, are essentially intermediaries between host-created forms and true pure forms: they are comprised of hosts' biomass, yet they are not created from pure Flood biomass. I also like the notion that the thrasher, bomber, and swarm forms are infected by inhaled spores rather than by infection forms, given their lack of tendrils and other instantly recognizable combat form mutations, as well as the fact that they still have eyes. We know that this is possible, as seen with the Flood launcher, whose spore globules can cause unprotected life forms to mutate on the spot.

While I am certainly no professor of physics, I have always held similar theories as to the nature of hard light. In fact, they are - step by step - almost identical to yours, though they might vary on a few details. It would only require manipulating photons into the desired configuration - like you said, with lasers. If I am not mistaken, this would displace ambient gas, which would then, for all practical purposes, "harden" due to the opposing inward and outward forces: Newton's third law at work. Any solid that made contact with the "hardened" gas would then react as if touching another true solid.

Hard light seems nearly feasible with modern technology. Nonetheless, it's amazing to think of how advanced the Forerunners' understanding of hard light was; the Didact's ship was almost entirely comprised of hard light, as were many other pieces of Forerunner technology. As described in Cryptum, hard light could be rendered totally opaque, giving the impression of physical walls and the like; totally invisible, as when observing planets below; or any color imaginable, allowing infinite potential for creating art, such as at Bornstellar's estate. I suppose that holography was used in conjunction with hard light to make this possible, or that the atoms within hard light were manipulated with the Forerunners' "magical" technology. What do you think about this?

Thank you for your input.

After giving it some thought, I find myself both agreeing with you about the Flood Super Cell's abilities, and also that I think I can see a solution to the issue I raised. Given that the Flood use "spores" to interface with and mutate a host's biomass and DNA, I think I can see what the Flood do.

Taking into account the information from both Halo art books, I think I can piece together what happens. Given that Infection Forms and the lesser infectioun mechanisms, such as spore clouds, can only partially mutate a host organism at best, it is likely that the Flood cells do precisely what you have suggested, and consume only some of the host's cells as they replace the appropriate structures with some of their own.

Good examples of this would be the boosted and reengineered musculature of a Combat Form, the generation of the tentacle-claws in the limbs, and the fact that the host continues to decay and breakdown the longer the Infection Form has possessed it. These are signs of rather than complete mutation, like something akin to the T-Virus or something like that, Flood Feral-Stage infection mechanisms are more like body-controlling growths, like some kind of parasitic fungus, that only partially transform the organism. The Cordyceps parasitic fungus that attacks ants and other insects is somewhat similar to this.

That real-world fungus attaches itself to its host, and sends tendrils, or hyphae, into the animal's body, and literally digests parts of the body and replaces them with its own structures, alongside sending behavior-altering chemicals into the creature's nervous system and brain. The Agrobacteria that I cited in the Super Cell article are a kind of bacteria that infect some plants, insert specific genes into the host, and cause the host to grow tumors and similar growths to generate an environment in which the bacteria can thrive. In both cases, in the Cordyceps fungus and the Agrobacteria, the host organisms are physically and behaviorially altered, consumed to a degree on a cellular level, and ultimately breakdown, decay, and die.

Seem familiar?

In this case, I imagine that a similar sequence of events occurs at the molecular-genetic and cellular levels in an organism infected by the Flood. The Flood cells in spore form enter the target life form, interface, analyze, and adapt to the host's genetic and cellular make up, and then devour and replace the material that was lost. In this regard, the Flood both mutate and devour a host as infection proceeds, but only transforming specific parts of the host, such as limbs, musculature, etc., but leaving the rest alone and using the unaltered parts as fuel.

In that regard, the Infection Form is the control center of a mind and behavior-affecting parasitic growth that is partially integrated into the host, which continues to digest the body in order to sustain itself. If you could see an Infection Form with its growths without its host body, you'd likely see a mass of tendrils, muscles, nerve structures, globules, and a variety of tentacles and claws radiating away from the parasite, which fits into the form of whatever the host species is. This would fit with the consistent theme of the Flood being a parasitic organism that devours any life it comes across.

With this hypothesis, would you agree that this mystery has largely been solved? With this in hand, it is fair to say that Carrier Forms are simply a more pronounced and advanced version of this, while Pure Forms are composed of Flood cells that have completely interfaced, anaylzed, adapted, and consumed the biomass of the captured hosts, including the bone, which has been reshaped into these Flood forms. The same could probably be said of the Flood stationary and massive forms, such as those seen in Origins, Halo Wars, and ultimately with the Gravemind itself.

As for those massive Flood forms and structures, especially present during the Forerunner's downfall, it is likely that those are extensions and mobile modules of the Gravemind itself, much like how the cut "Flood Juggernaut" was supposed to be. Perhaps they are examples of the Juggernaut being re-imagined and integrated as something separate from the Pure Forms? The Encyclopedia mentioned there being a Flood Juggernaut form, so perhaps that is what they would be.

As for Flood forms that may not be directly infected by Infection Forms, such as the Bomber, Thrasher, and Flood Swarms, it is possible that Spore clouds function as the infectious agent. In that case, the spores do what has been hypothesized, but generate less of the kinds of alterations seen in Combat and Carrier Forms, and instead generate generalized alterations based largely on the host's own anatomical and physiological characteristics. This could account for the lack of physiological breakdowns present in such forms, and the fact that they do not seem to possess the signature sensory organs as their primary sensory equipment.

On a separate note, I have applied some thought to another enigmatic fixture of Halo; the Forerunner "Hard Light" technology. As you are aware of, it is the technology utilized in the ubiquitous energy bridges and the ornate outer shells of their architecture. As for how it operates, I have a theory, based on both the quote at the top of the Light Bridge article, and my own knowledge of physics (non-mathematical, that is.)

In nutshell, from what I have pondered on and deduced, is that "Hard Light" is at least to a degree a term of phrase, rather than an specific term. As I edited on the specified articles, this technology involves some kind of interplay between coherent, high-energy photons, and surrounding matter, specifically a gas such as air. With this in mind, also note that Hard Light is always held in some form of rigid form, sent from and held above a set of emitters.

Another important note about the science involved is that the energy bridges have the cascade of photons illuminate and displace, i.e. push the air within and around it aside. While this seems somewhat odd, it is helpful to remember that the air is being pushed aside in 3-dimensions, in all directions. Given that the shaft of light is still visible, it is likely that there are still atoms within it, albeit held in a certain place and speed, just like the air around it.

This would mean that the cascade of photons is moving and at the same time holding the gas particles in place, which would also involve the generation of a certain amount of outward and inward pressure, which in turn would generate a specific amount of opposing force to any object touching it. This would be possible because that while photons have no mass, they nevertheless carry energy, and can influence the speed, movement, etc. of particles that do have mass. In the real world, lasers are used to cool down and even hold atoms in place, as well as atoms absorbing and "holding" photons in place.

That would suggest that while Hard Light may be seemingly based on suprisingly mundane physics, the knowledge, technology, and sheer finesse required to create it could help explain why the Covenant couldn't replicate it. It must be incredibly difficult to utilize photons as a means of creating and holding together specific, obstructing masses that would otherwise be an innocuous, harmless gas.

This complex interplay between light and matter could even help explain how energy shields work, for that also involves some kind of interplay between energy and matter.

Thank you very much! I'm actually surprised that I received the award, as I haven't been very active lately. Since General5 7 resigned due to her loss of interest in Halo, I've been taking a hiatus to ensure that I don't experience the same fate. Thus, I've been playing other games, reading other books, et cetera, in addition to going to school around the clock.

To answer your question, I suppose that the Flood must absorb DNA to use as a genetic template in order to induce mutation. If the super cell didn't contain the host's genetic information, it would likely be unable to provoke any changes whatsoever. Perhaps the host's DNA and the genetic material of the super cell must interface before the mutation process can take place. For example, an infection form could not simply release its spores as soon as it latched to a host; the super cell within would have to analyze the host's DNA and then - in a fraction of a second - adapt itself to infect the host. That way, the mutation could occur within seconds, as the super cell would be optimized to infect that specific host's neurological pathways and other bodily systems.

Greetings, Braidenvl.

It's been a while since I've logged in. I've noticed that you've been nominated as halopedian of the month. Congratulations!

I am happy for your success, and the work that you have done. Fantastic!

In any event, as I return my attention to the nature of this site, I've noticed an apparent discrepancy regarding how the Flood operate. According to both the Art of Halo and the Art of Halo 3, on pages 48 for the former and for the latter 28, the Flood are described as "digesting" their victims, replacing the host biomass with their own "super-cell" type, and altering the host's DNA itself by digesting it.

Given the fact that the Flood Infection Forms release "spores" that induce mutation in the host, how might this be integrated alongside their alteration and mutation of a host via digestion, rather than traditional mutation, such as inserting genetic code into a host's cells?

How might this be accomplished? The reason I ask this is because the information on the Flood main article, the Infection Form, and the Flood Super Cell articles, is because the information added about insertion of genetic material and conversion of a host was material I added, even though I'm not sure if it is accurate or not.

If you have any ideas on how this can be brought into sync, I'd appreciate it.