Forerunners (Halo)

File:Halo Forerunner.png

Image of a Forerunner as depicted by Bungie Studios and Microsoft Games

Forerunners is the translated name for an ancient race of sentient beings which ceased to exist 100,000 years before the events of the Halo video game series began. They are known for their advanced technologies, enabling them to build mega-structures like the Halo installations, The Ark and the Shield Worlds. All that is known about the Forerunners was learned from the various artifacts of their creation, found on the planets Reach, Earth, Sigma Octanus IV, Harvest, Arcadia, Sanghelios, Kholo, and Janjur Qom. They were preceded by another extinct race known as Precursors. While they took the responsibility of preserving every life form in the galaxy, they were ultimately threatened by the parasitic Flood. Through the use of the Halo weapons array, they were able to all but defeat the Flood, seemingly at the cost of their own existence and much of the life in the ancient Milky Way galaxy.

History

Origin

The Forerunners were a very advanced civilization which came into existence after overthrowing another race known to them as Precursors, who were believed to be responsible for their creation. Only one Precursor known as The Timeless One survived and was locked in a time bolt on Charum Hakkor. After becoming the dominant species in the galaxy, their empire spanned over three million fertilized and inhabited worlds. The fact that the Halos were scattered all over the galaxy hints that the Forerunner Empire covered most, if not all, of the galaxy.

The Forerunners originated from the planet Ghibalb in the Orion complex. Their civilization was based on the Mantle, a belief that it was their responsibility to protect all life in the galaxy. They presumably monitored the evolution of all other species in the galaxy, intervening in their evolution when necessary to make sure that they followed paths of peace, free of conflict. One such interference was the devolution of the original human race, due to it being considered a violent species. The Forerunners themselves were a race without conflict and at a point in their history where they had reached disarmament. This disarmament was the main factor that weakened the Forerunners against the Flood attack.

Flood-Forerunner War and Firing of Halo-Array

Later they came in contact with the extragalactic parasite known as the Flood on the planet G 617 g. Details of this first contact are unavailable. The Forerunner immediately recognized the parasite as a threat to the entire galaxy and moved to contain them. Believing the Flood to be a mere parasite, a non-sentient disease, the Forerunner approached the situation from a biohazard containment perspective. What they found, however, was that the Flood was intelligent, adaptable, and calculating.

After being unable to contain the Flood outbreak, the galaxy broke out into a state of war. Through 300 years of conflict, the Forerunners realized that their conventional naval tactics were ineffective against the Flood. New weapons and tactics were developed to combat them, "Sentinels" deployed as a means of maintaining the Flood through surgical strikes. However, these tactics proved effective only in slowing the expansion of the Flood, and soon the Forerunner leadership realized that only way to stop was to deprive it of any and all hosts, thus eliminating its potential to grow.

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Halo-Array ready to fire manually from The Ark

To stop this the Forerunners developed the massive Halo installations, which were designed to starve the Flood to death by killing all sentient life with enough biomass to sustain them, as mentioned by 343 Guilty Spark. There was debate as to whether to use the Halo Array or not resulting in civil war. It was decided that using the Array was the only option of stopping the Flood. Hence they did not start the war until it was too late.

The Gravemind managed to convince the contender-class AI, 032 Mendicant Bias, to unite with the Flood and led an attack of Forerunners. At last, the Forerunners 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 The Ark.

Before their disappearance from the galaxy, the Forerunners would name humanity their successors, identifying them with the title "Reclaimer".

Society

The Forerunner civilization was mainly divided into five categories.

Builders

The Builders were the highest rate of the Forerunners, considered to be the most powerful in terms of intelligence, wealth, and political power. As such, they were responsible for designing and creating most of the Forerunners' megastructures, including the Halo Array and Onyx. The chief of the Builder rate and all its guilds was known as the Master Builder. The Master Builder was often considered the most powerful Forerunner in the empire.

Miners

The Miners were the second-highest rate in Forerunner society. They were responsible for obtaining the materials required for the work of the Builders.

Lifeworkers

The Lifeworkers were the third-highest rate in Forerunner society. They specialized in biology and medicine, especially with the experimentation of various forms of life. It was not uncommon for Lifeworkers to receive their own planets for experimentation. The highest possible rank achievable by a Lifeworker was Lifeshaper.

Warrior-servant

The Warrior-Servants were the fourth-highest rate and primary military caste in Forerunner society. They were responsible for defense and warfare in the Forerunner empire. The highest class of Warrior-Servants was known as the Prometheans and were once been in high social standing and power, serving in various roles in the Forerunner Council. The highest Promethean was the Didact, the Supreme Commander of the Forerunner Forces.

Huragok

The Huragok or Engineers are biological supercomputers that were created by the Forerunners. They were constructed before the firing of the Halo Array and due to their mechanical nature, survived it. They are the only Forerunner creation to switch allegiance to the Covenant where they are used to study Forerunner artifacts. They are non-combatants but can be rigged as suicide-bombers.

Technology

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A sentinel(above) and a monitor(below), both are Forerunner creations.

Forerunner technology was very advanced. They were one of two civilizations to achieve a Tier 1 technological advancement, the other being prehistoric humanity. The only Tier 0 level civilization was Precursors. They were able to manufacture solidified surfaces out of light by using technology known as hard light. They discovered the ability to use slipspace to teleport between locations almost instantaneously, and create numerous forms of advanced machinery. They developed the ability to initiate pre-mature stellar collapses of stars and create jovian-sized planets in less than a year, along with moving entire solar systems through slipspace. They had mastered the use of various energy fields, including buffer fields which were used to manipulate gravity. They made constraint fields used to restrain individuals, confinement fields to block the movement of entire ships, and the containment and collection fields to harness entire stars for energy production. They had discovered camouflaging technologies, including dazzlers (generated visual and auditory delusions) and bafflers (geometric distortions that could effectively hide a large area not only from plain sight, but also a starship's sensors). The Forerunners were able to alter evolution, and devolve/evolve other species. They also were able to travel to different dimensions, examples being slipspace, a photon-only 'realm' known to the Forerunners as the Glow, Denial-of-Locale, and shunspace. They were also contemplating altering the galaxy's axis.

The more known of Forerunner technological creations are the Halo-Array, The Ark, and the Onyx shield world and Dyson Spheres.

Weaponry

Forerunner constructs and sentries use a broad variety of weapons, typically high-powered energy beams. The Sentinels wield orange-colored directed energy beams, used primarily for fighting the Flood. Sentinel Majors 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. The Sentinels of Onyx had more powerful weaponry. It consisted of a sphere surrounded by three floating booms that generated powerful energy shields which would suddenly pop into place in order to deflect objects moving at high velocities. Though sentinels were created mainly to destroy the flood, they will attack a human or covenant too.

The monitors were designed by Forerunners so that they have 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 in Floodgate, The Covenant and Halo.

Symbols

The Forerunner glyphs seem to be based on a series of circular, complex shapes. The glyphs have been inscribed almost everywhere Forerunners were once present, from different areas of Earth, to the Halos. They were known to put these glyphs and symbols onto their weapons, machinery and clothing, something the Covenant also copied, evident with the Forerunner symbols placed on the hilt of the Energy Sword and on the Sangheili Combat Harness

Futrue apperances

It may be possible that forerunners might appear in Halo 4.Becuase when Master cheif reaches the end of the ship there is a forerunner planet.

References

• Forerunner on Halopedia, the Halo wiki
• Forerunner Symbolism
• Greg Bear, ed. (2008). Halo: Cryptum. Random House. ISBN 978-07615-6072-2.