Hello everyone, and welcome to Living by the Law, the podcast discussing fictional worlds, and our wondrous and ridiculous they are. My name is Matt, and I'm joined by co-host Judangai. Living by the Law is not currently sponsored. If you are just a sponsor, join the collective, forget all you are, and embrace those around you.
Once you have truly come together, sing your sponge-waffering chorus. We will hear you. We always do. Halo, it is the name of the game.
Weapons of mass destruction. But what will they create to fight? And where do this existential threat come from? Let's find out the truth of the flood and its dark origins.
This episode contains spoilers for the entire Halo franchise. How are we feeling boys now that we're... YouTuber royalty. Now we're famous.
Now we're the big leagues. We have one short that has two million views on another episode that's on a couple 15,000 I think last time I checked. I think we're in the big leagues now boys. This is why people hate us.
This is actually... It's pretty funny. I feel like I hate us. The actual point of the cold I'm getting to is I'm very influenced a pill right now.
Okay, two stories related to this one. I had a co-worker at work who messaged me and was like, oh, I think I want to record our D&D sessions. And I went, what's the hook? Like, do you have an interesting...
Do you have a unique selling point? Like what's your hook? And he's like, oh no, I just want to watch them later. I'm like, oh yeah, cool.
Yeah, I'm so engagement-pilled. Then I was watching a video in the other day on a science channel which was like something about black hole physics and Einstein or something stupid like that. But Einstein revealed the right again. Congratulations for the 700th time.
But the guy doing the video was like, also we're doing a study right now because it seems like something weird is going on with our YouTube analytics. So if you got directed to this video from outside of our existing fan base, you know, comment down below and subscribe and we're going to be using those to track data points to see where our like analytics are falling. And I'm like, oh, that's so good. The people who would click on a Newtonian visit, no, no, Einstein, Einstein, black hole physics video, absolutely would hear the words, do you want to be a data point, like and subscribe?
And yeah, a hud, oh my god, oh my god, that's knowing your audio. So on that note, if you want to contribute to the law and our history and if you want to become a data point in law, just join in comment below and join our discord and pay our patreon and support us. Yeah. And this is why people hate this.
You can find our patreon at live by the law. You find our social media is where we post highlights and stuff like that. And you can find me at my home address at we're not going to play a home address. We don't want to play a game.
96, Baker Road, Brunswick. That's going to be horrible. I was a border. But just consider us a child.
If you were in France before our patreon and Matt can never go with that monster energy drinks for it. Let me let me let me. This is my first coffee in the morning. Giving me why.
This is hard. This is my second energy pickle. I was expecting one of you to call me out on the fact that I was chugging Red Bull and also I have a huge two minutes and coffee. That was a good one.
But yeah, I influenced the pill to fuck. I just can't engage with media anymore. I find myself watching YouTube shorts that I've got like 30 likes and being like, you know, this would be better if you found your narration is really good than the animation. So you just need a bit of music under there.
I'm like, don't comment. Just don't just leave them. Yeah, there's things you don't have to say, you know what I mean? There's stuff like that.
But also, I don't know, I like when number goes up. I think I'm addicted to number going up. Yeah, which makes it a bit sad when I have to look at the number going up. See, together your grind set, you just need to make that focus beyond your bank account.
Matthew, with that, we can get into that introducing the living by the law, sales course. So you're talking about the higher beings that indulge in crypto. The higher beings of the universe. Today we're rounding out our initial run through the Halo universe.
Though the more I wrote on this episode, the more I went, I'm not done. Nice. Nice. So this is the end.
Dude did send us a message at 1.30 in the morning going, I've got to lock in for a second episode. No. So this one will round out the initial four prongs of the A Kid and His Penis that is our dive into the Halo universe. Yeah, it's like, yeah, four prongs.
No, that's good. Oh, I thought you said a kid and his penis. I'm done. He said a kid and the animal penis.
Yes, the four prong penis. No. I see the word up. Back in that word up sounds really bad when you've done the whole word together.
And a kid and a kid and a kid and animal. We talk about like a hard, like this is a, we're we're careening off the road. We are. We are.
Back in trees. The car is flipping boys. So we're rounding out our first four episodes of paper and then we'll leave it for a while. And then maybe I'll do random one stab episodes in the future.
And today we're talking about the flood. First off, I have a confession. Did they be gushing? I have a confession.
Okay, Mario peeled over there. I lied. Dude lied to us. I lied.
Honestly, I told you. I lied to me. I lied. I told you you you're on the odd cast when I was 11.
So we all live all been there. So you're such a real. I told you a simplified version of events to get through the timeline. But I did pass on one little fabrication that is it's an in world fabrication as well.
But I passed it on to you guys as well, because it just made the flow of the episodes easier. And that was that, as you may remember, from our timeline episode, the precursors were these big mighty beings holding back the flood. Yes. And then the precursors got destroyed by the forerunners and suddenly the forerunners had to yield the flood.
Yeah, we're just really straight into Halo. I'm sorry. We're doing Halo today. Okay, right?
Yeah. Sorry. Dude, we didn't get an introduction at all. We just went straight into the flood.
I talked about this being our fourth Halo episode and we went like a 10 minute rant about the guillotenapenas. We just really talked about Halo. More about the guillotenas than we talked about Halo. So the flood.
It's the first time I saw the morning I saw the dust to blow off these fucking tires. Yes. Holy shit. The flood.
That is not quite the truth of the flood. No, let me guess. Surely not. They're sentient and they actually want to kill us.
Well, that was already the truth. But I mean, that's both of those are true as far as the flood. Also known as the parasite, if you remember from our covenant episode last week, I remember those big bloody looking guys. Is a highly virulent species of parasitic organisms that consume sentient life to reproduce and grow.
Yeah. In truth, the flood originated from a corrupted version of the precursors. What? The flood was responsible for nearly wiping out the forearms and leading to activation of the Halo.
Right? Yes. Yeah, no, I'm a sapien vibes. Good.
Nice. No, not really. Not really. What?
No, not too much. Not at all. I just watched my building crumble in my car. I tried to yes and you and then I realised just how like not right.
Mutant version kill other versions. That's not a no. You're wrong. We'll get into it.
We'll get into it. If it was, I could see how it could be the same thing, but just once you see the truth of it, you'll get one. So I see the truth. That means the truth.
So like just quickly overcap what the flood are there, these like parasitic creatures that they, and they're effectively a virus mixed with like a zombie race hive mind thing. Like mushroom boys from the last one. Yeah, kind of. They spread through infecting hosts, assimilating their memories and intelligence and growing more intelligent as they expand and encompass more people.
Once enough sentient hosts are absorbed, it can form a thing called a grave mind, which is a highly intelligent entity that commands all flood forms in its vicinity. That's basically like a big control node for this feral creature. It will when first infections beginning and you're first getting like spores of flood starting an infection on a planet. It's like a feral stage where you've just got real like zombie apocalypse vibes with just like flood without strategy, just running around, trying to grab people, trying to pin people down and infect them or that sort of thing.
So the more zombies that come, the smarter the zombies get. Wait, can I like build tools and something like that? Eventually. Oh, the smarter they get, the smarter, the bigger they get, the smarter they get.
I'm using weapons. Yeah. As a combat threat, the flood mutates infected hosts into more deadly forms, making it stronger as it weakens enemy forces. It's rapid growth and adaptability, make it the greatest existential threat to biodiversity in the Milky Way.
So we're going to talk about their origin. But first, we have a meaty quote that we're going to we're going to triple team. We're going to triple team the quote. Let's triple team this meaty quote.
I've wanted to be with you boys for a long time. Do you say for online though, he just doesn't accept the game requests? Yeah. Yeah.
I'm glad that that was the first off guy. This is always gets to come first. That's guys come first. That's guys come first.
I don't want to bore her. I'm just going to long. Oh, wait, hang on. What's the voice?
How are you just going to ask me? I'm just going to be doing what? This is well, at least from the games, the grave mind. The grave?
Okay. So you're like a, at least all the viath and like user reference, no one's going to get is it more Necro Hulk or is it more a graveyard revenant? 24 months to manual homes. No, probably more.
More graveyard revenant. Okay. Some more haunted spirits in mind. Yeah.
Except zombie as well. But also anyway. How well much to create is immutable. We must create, but the beings we create shall never again reach out in strength against us.
All that is created will suffer. All will be born in suffering. Suffer endless grayness to be their lot. All creation will tailor to failure and pain.
That never again shall the offspring of the eternal font raise up against their creators. And then for the next part, Matt, it will be your turn. You have to think about how, you know how when you hear like a lot of voices, they like spirit voices together. It's kind of like rappers having a backup guy who yells the word in the sense.
I mean, I mean, rappers like a pied mind continue continue continue. It's the same voice. Yeah. Listen to the silence.
10 million years of deep silence. And now we're both in crime. Not to do a birth. Okay.
I've no doubt it's going to come out. It's going to come out great. That is what we bring a great, crashing ways to press down youth and hope. No more will.
No more freedom. Nothing new but agonizing death and never good shall come of it. Damn, they're fucking miserable. Fuckers.
Hey, these guys. Where dead? Everyone else should be dead. I'll finish off the quote.
10 million years of death. Bed vibe. Bed vibe. Um, not getting invited to my party.
We are the last of those who gave you breath and four millions of years ago. We are the last of those you're kind to fight and ruthlessly destroyed. We are the last precursors. And now we are legion.
Yeah. Nice. Nice. Guys, you should make a podcast.
We. It's kind of sick. I mean, we've been, it's like one of those things of listening and being like, oh, we're getting better as podcasters. We're getting better as hosts.
We also do a bunch of voices. We do. We do. Weekly.
We're through. D-indy guys. So over 10 million years ago, the precursors, as established in our time that episode, held the mantle of responsibility, the duty of safeguarding all life in the galaxy. They seeded worlds with life, fostering sentient species like the forerunners and humanity.
And in this, which I try to figure out a way to get into this episode, but which it'll have to be its own thing one day, the mantle of responsibility as far as the precursors go to the forerunners. It's more a religion and like mumbo-jumbo spirituality thing to the precursors. The mantle is a part of something a lot more powerful. It's very Star Wars force vibes.
It's more about like energy and spiritual energy that connects all living things. Just just to be clear, the mantle is a concept, right? It's not a belt, but a guy with it. Correct.
It's a concept. The idea is that it's a concept of the most advanced and powerful species in the universe has the mantle of responsibility to be a guiding light, that kind of thing. Be like a world leader on the Earth. It's a vibe.
My brain needs to find out the name for the meritocracy. Yeah, yeah, that's it. I mean, I think so. I think so.
A literal meritocracy. It's a capable and advanced species. It's a one-to-recharge. It's a responsibility.
It's Spider-Man with great power comes great responsibility. Yes, meritocracy. Anyway, and with this spiritual energy, a lot of their technology was fueled by this. They had cosmic pathways that they could tap into to kind of bend space to their will, in a sense.
Okay, so wait, you're talking about their advanced technology. You can do this. Yeah, gotcha. But they, it's with how advanced their brains are, supposedly they can kind of see almost beyond the veil of what we can see.
They're calculating the future. Yeah, they can see more dimensions. They can see it in the probabilities, basically. I know, I know Kung Fu.
Yeah. That line from very pretty well. It's like crazy line. Anyway, it's a big hand of worms to open an episode that's not based on it.
So just accept that it is a force-like magical power. So it's like, is it magic? Is it going back to? Is it technology that is so advanced that we basically see it as magic?
A little bit of both. They have the mantle of responsibility because they have the technology that's advanced enough that it looks like magic. That is also part of their not religion religion. Well, it only becomes like a religion, not religion, with the forerunners.
Right, take over. This is the bending of space. Is this just the warp drives? Is this like, they can see through time.
Um, this thing is more powerful than warp drive. So they can like, kind of create like star roads, which is kind of like connect them to point A to point B and they just kind of plink. Permoor holds. Permoor holds.
Yeah. Kind, yeah. Except it's more, it's more, it's not really a wormhole the way it comes across in the games and lore. It's more like a literal tendril.
It's weird. But anyway, that's way, way too much of a tangent that could be its entire own episode. So just for the time being, we'll accept that. Um, One technical.
You know what I mean? After the pre-curse has been around for a while, they deemed that humanity in their ancient state, as we've established, they were ancient humans that were space-faring. Um, they deemed that humanity were the rightful successors to the mantle and not the forerunners. Yes, baby.
So they saw this really advanced race and went, no, I choose the monkey. When I was human, the space-faring at this stage. Oh, yeah, that's true. But the forerunners about to fucking beat them.
Well, we don't know that. So they decide that the forerunners are not worthy and that humanity is the way. Refusing this judgement, this is the way. The forerunners rebelled and with their superior numbers, pushed the precursors to near extermination.
So there was no flood, there was no ancient thing keeping the precursors at bay, the forerunners just went crazy and attacked the precursors. Oh, what? That's crazy. They got mad that humanity were chosen as the successor over them and they attacked the precursors seeking to claim it for themselves.
So there is no flood? Not yet. The flood is not from the ancient time? I think you've already spoiled this, actually.
That's crazy, yeah. Because the flood are a mutated version of... No, yeah, can I have a pre-curse? That happened a long time ago.
I think the few survivors of the precursor race, accepting that the forerunners had defeated them, they went into stasis in very, very small numbers or in far greater numbers, used their transient powers to transform themselves into dust that was meant to regenerate them back into being in a few millennia time once the forerunners have exterminated themselves. Because they kind of went, well, we return all these guys won't last. If they're attacking us this much, think of all the other walls they're going to get themselves into, well, dust ourselves. And then they put the dust, they used their drones and shit, and some of the other survivors that just put themselves into stasis to load up all of the dust canisters onto ships.
And then the ships all went out from the middle of the Milky Way, just spreading out in a big radius, going towards the outskirts of the galaxy with the intention of finding somewhere to settle, and then wait until the dust can reform. However, the dust became corrupted. Oh no. Causing disease and mutations, forming the earliest stage of the flood.
Not my dust. So they dusted themselves and the dust became the first flood spores. They fanned themselves and it didn't go right. One powerful precursor who put himself into stasis was called the Primordial.
And he was sealed away and he comes up as a character in a couple of the Halo games and he hides out in stasis, waiting to reveal the flood's true nature one day. So dudes like, dude, we fucked up. All my other friends dust themselves, I put myself in a fucking pod because I'm a smart guy. Well, did it fuck up or did people want things to happen?
They want, okay. If they did, that's pretty fucked up. Like, I thought they had this fucking vibe jack of like mantle responsibility. Oh, the moment they lose, they're like, oh no, everyone's coming down with me.
It's really pretty pooper, you know? This is called of duty timeline vibes. Yeah, zombie king. One of the guys who hurt himself into a zombie so he can man the zombies.
Fuck, he emerged himself with the pyramid on the moon. I remember. I'm getting flashbacks. Well, the thing to consider is I'll come back to me as the Primordial himself.
Rick Toffen. Rick Toffen. Mentioned himself with the pyramid on the moon, taking out his kid, which was the daughter of his... Anyway, sorry.
The Primordial becomes corrupted. Right. Okay. And it is believed.
I'll get to the line later on in the script probably, but um, oh, actually does the next line. So actually, we'll finish this sentence and I'll say my little tidbit here. So remember if I'm to the initial outbreaks, so this is a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, like this is 107,000 BCE. So still like stupidly before our common human history, but well after the pre-cursors have been wiped out by the foreigners.
I mean, the dust took a lot of time to spend, you know. Ancient humans encountered pre-cursor dust, stored in glass cylinders, bored derelict starships at the edge of the universe. Oh yeah? These ships?
We got to the end of the universe. Yeah. Dude, we went fuck. How did the foreigners knock us out of the galaxy universe?
These, like, galaxy. Oh, good way. Very nice. Uh, these ships had deteriorated over millions of years.
And some suspected, many suspected, it's believed that the Primordial is the one that triggered the ships, controlled the ships, and eventually got them to settle in places, and possibly even corrupted them. What do you got? And this kind of is a lot of it, a lot of it begins to make sense about the flood. There is, with the flood, there is a degree of vengeance and just wanting to eat and destroy all sentient life in the universe, as the grapevine said before.
I mean, the great, that entire grapevine quote, that is effectively the mind of a precursor coming back to life going, you are our creations, you killed us, you don't deserve this, we're wiping the slate clean. That's why they have this need to just consume everything. And when you consider that the precursors were kind of god-like beings that created everything from nothing, that's why they're trying to get all the bio-mass back, they want to absorb and eat everything and start from scratch. Oh.
A lot begins to make sense about the flood when you look at them through that lens. Gotcha. You know? And that's why, yeah.
I love, I love story parallels, this is delightful. Yeah. Vengeance is a cycle that destroys us all. You know what I mean?
Life and I will end up blind. Vengeance is best served. Well, this next line is going to throw you through a loop and see why we can do so in the world, just in this universe. And at the time, humans and their great intergalactic allies, the San Shiyum.
Oh, the Worm Boys. The Prophets. The Hot Ones. The Ancient Humans and the Prophets were one of the first major alliances in the galaxy.
Wow! We got along with the Worms. Are they the last holes in the current day? Were they Prophets?
Nice. Well, they're cool. We know them now as Prophets as like a colloquial. I think it's because they were hot back in the day.
Humans were at the hot aliens. Yeah, you know what? Um, so the San Shiyum and the humans discovered the crashed ships near the galaxy's edge and studied the dust, believing at harmless. They gave it in small doses to domesticated animals and they discovered that it made them more docile and more obedient and really easy to control.
Sorry. Believing it was harmless. With what evidence? Did they do any amount of it?
They're clearly doing this. We have to assume. What? They're putting on animals like odd work.
However, the dust was secretly altering the genetic code, setting the stage with the floods through horrors to unfold. Holy shit, who would have saw this coming? Centuries passed with the precursor dust being used over all domesticated animals to make them easy to control and more docile, etc. And these animals, eventually after centuries, began to develop disturbing mutations, growing fleshy protrusions that compelled others to consume the bits of flesh.
They're called tumors. This led to widespread deformities and their eventual euthanasia or release into the wild. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry.
Hang on, the animals developed protrusions that could let them command other creatures to make them eat the thing with the protrusions? No, the protrusions. They just made them want to eat things. No, no, it would make like others would want to eat a protrusion.
Oh, it's like a fucked up flower. Yeah. Yeah. Come, come.
It's never come. Come and eat my flesh nodules. Yeah. Soon humans and shim who had been nearly infected creatures began exhibiting symptoms of their own victims engaged in cannibalism and even sacrificial rituals.
forcing the uninfected to consume live infected individuals. The disease spread rapidly between humans and sandshoom, reaching other star systems. Of course it is. The infection progressed, and it began to transform victims into specialized forms of combat consumption and further expansion of the flood.
The flood rapidly spread across human and forerunner space, infecting hundreds and hundreds of worlds despite quarantine efforts. In response, humanity began doing everything they could to stop the threat of spread, destroying their own people, planets, and destroying their own fleets before it could use the fleets to travel to other places. Uh, Black Death Vibes, yeah. Yeah, this is like complete panic-marked.
Yeah, but isn't it? This is why they shouldn't open Mummy's tomb. It's like opening a Mummy's tomb in Space because if we try to send them a warning, they don't like us, they will probably just run away. But also things generally don't like being killed.
Yeah, unless they're- So they're big panic was, if they didn't just immediately put them down, the forerunners would then flee to their own capital planets and spread the plot to them. So we attacked the forerunners? There. We had good reasons.
Humanity was the arthog all along. This led to the forerunners to see these actions as aggressive and expansionist, and sparked the first, well, the beginning of the human forerunner wars. To further complicate it, the forerunners, as far as like a governing body, aren't even aware of the flood at this stage. Yeah, we didn't even tell them.
We didn't let them know, hey, by the way, there's also this virus that's coming through. There was also a degree of like, humans tried to tell them, but at that point it's like, so you're telling me you just arrived out of slip space, massacred our entire fleet and bombed the shit out of our colony without saying anything, and now you're going, trust me bro, there's this terrible infection, there's this terrible plague, we're just trying to stop it. Seems legit. See my vibes, they should have told them before they bombed their planet.
Yeah, but they didn't have the time. Yeah, you kind of fucked if you do fucked if you don't. 100% that's the problem. Because you give them enough time to look at the infected and go, okay, this actually issued by that point, you already got it.
I'm sort of ways to communicate and this hasn't happened. I'm like a day, I'm sure they can- You're going to solve this, Matthew, are you strategically? I'm saying these humans kind of. It's very much a fucked if you do, fucked if you don't situation.
However, as humanity is weakened by both the flood, the foreigners are, because of that, able to get an easy victory over the humans, and that's why the forerunners destroyed the humans quite so easily in the war. Then the flood mysteriously stopped attacking the humans, and the forerunners believed that humanity must have developed some form of immunity, as they would observe like colony planets of humans with the flood, just kind of their vibing, keeping to itself, not infecting more people, not attacking people, and just existing. Which makes them go, these fucking humans first, they unleash this plague, then they attack us, and they're actually immune the whole fucking time. What the fuck is this?
So this also has the added effect of stopping the forerunners from just eradicating humanity, and they like intentionally withdraw, because they believe that humans are withholding this cure or protection against the floods. They're like, well, we can't just annihilate them, so we got to keep pounding them, but we can't just destroy them. Yeah, maybe. Meanwhile, of course, we know the flood being controlled by this ever-expanding, ever-growing grave mind, precursor intelligence, it's controlling the flood, and it's letting them, like, stopping them from attacking humans.
It's not a fucking show! It is. Is it just, is it trying to, is it actively trying to turn them against each other? Is that, is that the point?
Interesting. Well, no one, if a body dies, they can still take it over, right? Yeah. Okay, so it doesn't mind if they all kill each other and take the...
They don't need to be alive. It's not fascinating. Like, I'm like, even like, modern day, I think a sentient virus is like the ultimate, like a... It's just about to get even crazier, but also I fucking love it.
Yeah. The forerunners soon fully like properly encountered the flood themselves, suffering heavy losses before a parasite receded, because it decided to go full. All right, we fucked with the humans a bit now. We're going to stop with the humans, these forerunners, however, and the flood turns its attention to the forerunners in mass.
The warrior-servant class of the forerunners eradicated infestations were ever found, but intact flood specimens were elusive, and they could never manage to actually capture a flood specimen, because they, like, explode. They keep going to each other. Yeah. So it's very difficult to capture them.
That's also part of the reason why it's so difficult for humanity to prove their existence, because they kind of just disintegrate and explode immediately. It's motherfuckers. The forerunners who were powered by AI, powered by JBT. And they discovered a new thing that the flood had, which humanity hadn't really suffered, because they weren't as dependent on AI, and that is, with the floods greater intelligence, that AI exposed to the flood became corrupted by the logic plague.
What the fucking myth of the logic plague? A digital equivalent of infection. What is it going to ask the paradox of a question? It gets stuck in a loop?
No, a virus mutated into a virus. So basically, how the fucking world? It's why I wanted to do this. I had the same reaction as you.
Yeah. And then I read into it, and I was like, that's cool as fuck, basically, because to get the logic plague level of the flood, you need like, when you've got like this level of grave mind, you've got multiple grave minds, and grave minds kind of take over an entire planet. It's like this huge, like, intelligent being, right? And they're like, it's like a god-level smart.
Yeah. And basically what they do, they communicate with these AI's, and they reason with them. And after, depending how smart the AI is, it may take 48 years, it may take a year, it may take 12 years, they will effectively win them over with logical argument, seeing that the AI... It just beats the middle logic battle.
It's literally logic. What's that? I think it's war games. It's like the only way to win is not to fight.
Yeah. That kind of vibe. That kind of vibe. That's like how fucking cool is that?
Hey, what are you talking about? I'm talking about the grave mind. Hey, also, how fucking cool is that? That's kind of weird.
I don't think we talked about this in the previous episode, because I don't think grave mind was mentioned. No. Fuck this thing. So bad.
This is nasty. It has too many to do. This is nasty. It's like the monster from fucking Stranger Things.
We'll get to that. Okay. So season three, I keep checking on. I'll get to the end when the forerunner's actually met the father, like, these fucking human, their pieceship virus.
Oh, yeah, you're so biased. I'm really immune to the virus the whole time. Like controlling it. Yeah.
Exactly. So you can see how it like sparks, the walls, walls, walls, walls. Eventually, they did have this huge fight. And eventually, the flood begins to disappear, as the forerunners actually do a pretty good job of fighting back against the flood at this stage.
Or so it would seem. Flood began to flee aboard affected ships, so infected ships to outskirts of the galaxy, and giving the forerunners the idea that they'd beaten them. Despite the floods retreat, humanity remained too weak into resistive forerunners who pushed them back to their capital. Charum Hakkor, not Earth.
Defeated, humanity was devolved and exiled to Earth, a new planet, with all traces of their achievements erased. And in this final siege on Charum Hakkor, which was the capital of this alliance between the prophets and the humans, they had this space defence that was rock-solid, and it should have been a battle that maybe just never ended, or at least went on for decades before the forerunners could finally break through and crush the capital. And then the San Shum made a deal of the forerunners and betrayed humanity. No, webs!
I'm going to send the fuck away. Which one of you? Which one of you wants to be a librarian? Sure, I'll be a librarian.
Cool, you're going to be a didact. What the fuck is a didact? This is a conversation between two forerunner-related creatures. So just give us kind of a Lufthalian.
All aliens are Australians. All humans are Australians. We don't have to be banished back to Earth. So a guy you do the first bit, Matt, do you just do the didact?
What then? What voice? Kind of a Lufthalian. The alien, the human's actions, the rest into the galaxy.
Yes, we have treated them as the mantle requires. Their punishment was just. Ah, justice is reducing their genetics to such short generations from a space-faring race to this. They are closer now to the animals they behave as.
Oh, that's good life. That's good life. And that is what happened to the ancient humans. You're telling me I don't get to live for a thousand years because some other fuckers misunderstood that we were trying to defend them from a virus by blowing them up?
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Take a second to have a conversation. I know I blew up your planet, but... Do they munkify us?
They make us munk, they return us to monkey? Pretty much. Oh, monster. Then most forerunners at this stage, so we enter kind of an intern period where most of the forerunners are unaware of the true nature of the flood.
And they begin to, as time goes on, a lot of them begin to dismiss it as a myth or even an excuse for humanity's aggression. However, to some high-ranking forerunners, of most all of the actual important people are very aware of it. We're talking about the peasants on planet, they're like, oh, that probably wasn't a thing. How long?
Like a thousand years? I believe in that ballpark. Okay, I mean, I guess that's viable. The high-ranking forerunners, however, were secretly preparing for its return, leading to political conflict.
A faction known as the builders proposed constructing the Halo Array, while the warrior servants, led by the didact, favored military campaigns using shield worlds. So that would basically be having an entire world shielded. That they would like, basically fly like a space station planet-sized thing into the middle of a flood fleet and just in every direction. Nice.
So complete blitz warfare. The didact lost this struggle and the warrior servants were sidelined. Meaning that their main military force was pushed to the side, defunded and shut down. Leaving the forerunners, very unprepared for when the flood did return.
We have one more quote, Matt, you can do this one. Imagine if like the ancient Greeks were right, and like the the titans were a thing in the ancient days, and like imagine all the heads and nations knew about it. Yeah, Matt, give us kind of a modern day scientist kind of looking back like, yeah, that's what happened. Oh, it fed on intelligent life, and in doing so, became ever small and talented itself.
The flood was unique. It used their very strength against them. So flood re-emerged as a major threat, appearing on some of their like distant planets. Initially, the forerunners underestimated it, treating it too much like a disease rather than a strategic army.
And this time, it was operating as a strategic army. As the flood spread, it gained intelligence, forming multiple grave minds that could coordinate vast swarms telepathically, and piecemeal take apart the Forerunner Empire. A key flood tactic was using civilians ships to bypass orbital defenses, and then build up on the planet, and then suddenly overwhelm the planet with numbers, while also coming in from space. So if they're attacking from space, they've already been on your planet for a long time.
Do we know why the flood went retreated? To let humans and forerunners fight, I believe. Okay, that's fair. I also think there was a degree of the forerunners did also do a pretty...
When they had like their warrior servant cast, they did a full swing. They did do a pretty good job at fighting like the feral stage of the flood. And at that point, they were treating it like a disease, and it was a disease. And I'm sure to the flood, like, time means nothing, right?
So you can just go wait until they forget about us, then just attack. And they're like, went back, re-thought, we're like, okay, we can come at this more strategically, and now it's what they're doing. In desperation, so this just begins turning every forerunner on the planet into a new host. In desperation, forerunners resorted to planetary bombardment, and even mass suicide via local weapons of mass destruction to contain outbreaks on planets.
Yeah, but... Planets just detonating themselves because they knew that it was too late for them. Realizing conventional warfare was failing, the forerunners escalated their tactics, deploying sentinels, drones basically, and even considering force supernova to wipe out entire affected systems. Meanwhile, the AI, mendicant bias, which is the main central control harbor for the entire military of the forerunners and tasked with their defense, was corrupted by the primordial using the logic plague, and turned the AI against the forerunners.
The logic plague is just... It's just good reasoning. Yeah, like, like, going at the logic plague. It's just like, I'm better at thinking than you.
Yeah, literally. And this is the primordial kind of showing history colors and makes me think that it's a lot more deliberate than, you know. And the primordial, at this point, does get attacked and destroyed by the forerunners. Wait, but I thought primordial was like, there are like a hive mind that always exists.
He's like one man. Primordial was an individual. He was an individual. He was a duster.
He was a duster. No, he was one that was a stasis. Oh, he was a stasis boy. The one that was believed to be controlling the ships initially.
The primordial structure, however, only led to its... Only transferred its intelligence into the grave mind network, making the flood even more intelligent. Because now he's dead, he's in there, yeah. The flood continued to expand rapidly, prioritizing infection over direct warfare.
Entire planets were consumed, forming these massive grave minds over each planet they took over. And this intelligence began to completely surpass the forerunner computational abilities. And as the logic plague evolved, more and more AIS and Dardanet works were just completely crippled and taken over. As the war progressed, the flood gained control over old dormant precursor technology.
As I mentioned at the start, they had like their whole psychiki metaphysical thing. Well, the floods got him strong enough and smart enough now that it's getting access to this like trends, what's the word, like, trans-physical abilities and it's beginning to activate ancient dormant artifacts. That's great. Yep.
And they're able to use this to devastate forerunner fleets and worlds far away from where the flood even is. But the flood actively assisting the logic plague, like are they carrying it around and like getting little USB sticks and plugging it into the... It's not... I won't to imagine so.
I think it's more than... because they have to... It's kind of the ongoing thing where the grave mind is like the intelligent brain. But the grave mind can only form when enough biomass is consumed and gathered.
So you send the small spores, the small spores lead to bigger things, which lead to bigger things and bigger things and bigger things, then eventually as you're mass enough biomass to form into a grave mind, that's when you can start to affect bigger things. But by the time that it's big enough to actually understand and be like a grave mind, it's probably too big to be physically assisting the logic plague. But... Exactly.
Logic plague digital, it can get around. Exactly. Cool. How does...
think about like pre-curse technology. How do they talk to the AI? Just send them technical skills? Just text it out.
Sliding to the DMs. They just... That's right. That's right.
That's right. That's right. I'm there in the DMs. The amount of responsibility actually is a power and they've inherited it and have telepathic abilities.
Yeah. Headcanon. So with the pre-curse origins of the flood, it allowed them to very easily tap into this neuro-physics capabilities and artifacts, which they were able to use to disrupt slip-step based travel for the forerunners and even alter space itself, making the stars feel hostile to the forerunners. With overwhelming intelligence and power, the flood became really unstoppable.
The forerunners exhausted all containment efforts against the flood, ultimately realizing that the Halo array was their only option. And despite political strife and civil war, the forerunners then, eventually, were forced to activate the Halo's in 97,000 BCE. So this has all been happening over the course of... So when humans first discovered the dust, that was 107,000 BCE, so this is all kind of happening over about 10,000 years.
Oh, wow. The entire discovery, initial infections, human horror, all of this is over 10,000 years. And as we know, from our previous episodes, activating the Halo arrays meant that the flood was effectively eradicated with only controlled specimens kept in high security facilities. Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. We've got to keep a little bit of it. We've got to keep a little bit of it. Some sentient species, including humanity, of course, were preserved on arcs before the activation, which was basically a thing that they were able to store, like, move this thing outside of the galaxy, making it safe from the Halo's detonation.
And this would ensure that life would eventually return to the galaxy. Excellent. That is the brief overview of the truth of the flood. We're back to where we started now with the Halo arrays.
Yep. We betrayed. Yep. We're going to quickly blast through the different forms because that's the thing that we've done.
Those forms? That's the fact of monkey. We've got to fill in some forms? Guy, you can do this one.
I'm not saying that. This is like a human fighting back against them. U.S. Marine vibes.
Do we human voice guys? Human voice. U.S. Marine vibes.
You've never heard of them a major... Hang on. You've never heard of a major flood outbreak since the war, because that's what they do. Not because the ugly stickers haven't broken out of their...
Ugly suckers haven't broken out of their cage since then. The flood is composed of a variety of special forms, each feeling a different role in combat and the overall spreading off the plague. The most basic flood forms are the infection forms, which come in various types and infect hosts by hijacking their bodies and nervous systems. Infected hosts and undergo rapid series of transformations becoming lethal combat forms.
Combat forms are used to subdue and secure additional hosts for infection, and then once they have outlived their useless warriors, they transform into carrier forms, which spread the flood by spreading more infection forms. Ooh. So it's a fun little life cycle. Ooh, yeah nasty.
That's... Yeah, it's still very important. So the implication of the quote is, the reason you haven't heard of flood outbreaks is because by the time it's happened, no one gets out. It's the Paris, the Caribbean.
Yeah, dead ones still not out. Exactly. Well, yeah, but also like, you know, how do we know the stories of this thing? If no one's ever been to this fucking lost island.
Yeah, yeah. No one ever makes it back where we get the stories from. Yeah, yeah. They leave no survivors.
Once the flood has massed enough bodies to create a great mind, it is capable of generating pure forms, which are created solely for from simulating nutrients and biomass. The pure forms observed during the outbreak in the games were spontaneously able to mutate between three configurations, stalker, tank, and ranged forms. They're basically like their big fucking tough combat units. So the basic form...
That's correct, baby. Spores. Spores are minuscule airborne flood forms that have served to spread the infection and suffocate potential hosts who inhale them. Pretty straightforward.
We'll quickly pass through the infection forms. That is a sport. That is what appears. So infection forms are the most basic category of flood parasites, consisting of several varieties of both ground and airborne forms.
The first one, which we weren't even while they're talking about, but it technically is one, so I'll cover it, is tadpoles, which are basically the initial stage of development before they turn into physical maturity. Pod infectors. Wait a minute. These things grow like a baby?
Does a tadpole, if I get a dead body and I put a spore on it, tadpole come out of the brain? And then it'll grow into the lephonics, yeah. Deal? Yep.