The Timeless One

[ItsGettingMessi]

First off, brace yourselves for a long read. I liked this small facebook page called Master Chief, it only has like 72 people who liked it, and one of the admin sometimes makes these long posts about things. So the admin had earlier posted something about The Timeless One who is a Precursor, but they didn't know much about him. I posted about him turning Mendicant Bias against the forerunner and that helped him/her find out more stuff. A few hours later the admin posted this.
"Now, I'm sure many of you will have read the fantastic novel Halo: Cryptum released back in January by now. It closed the doors on a lot of old mysteries and opened up many, many more.

I'm here to talk about the Prisoner of Charum Hakkor and the connection he shares with the Gravemind, perhaps leading them to be one and the same. Prepare yourselves for a rather lengthy post:

The Terminals state that Mendicant Bias conversed with the Gravemind for 43 years before forcing itself into Rampancy, defecting to the Flood and betraying the Forerunners. I find it to be far beyond coincidence that the test-firing of Installation 05 at Charum Hakkor - and thus the release of the Prisoner - occurred at the same time and they conversed also for 43 years.

Gravemind states in Human Weakeness that he has consumed many AIs but spared one who joined him long ago, obviously referring to Mendicant Bias.

Primordium's description states that humans call the Prisoner "The Primordial", this is the same name Major John Smith uses to describe the Flood in The Mona Lisa.

The Prisoner is known as "the Timeless One", Gravemind describes himself as a "timeless chorus".

Gravemind states he has "listened - through rock and metal and time", the Prisoner listened to the humans and San'Shyuum at Charum Hakkor in his prison for a very long time.

The last words of the Gravemind is "resignation is my virtue; like water I ebb, and flow. Defeat is simply the addition of time to a sentence I never deserved... but you imposed." The latter part is referring to imprisonment, a sentence he never deserved. The PRISONER of Charum Hakkor, locked away for unknown reasons.

Mendicant Bias given charge of Installation 05 (his serial number was 05-032), the Prisoner stowed away on the Installation he stole - the same Halo we discover the Gravemind on 100,000 years later.

"Child of my enemy," is a reference to Ancient Humanity - the first foe the Flood fought and lost against.

The Gravemind was in containment on Installation 05 and escaped when Penitent Tangent ignored his containment protocols. The Gravemind cannot have been formed after the breakout because there was no sentient life living there.*

In the Bestiarum, they have the Spartans labled as "Unclassified. You can tell they mean Spartans because they list them as "-skiska, u got it good!- sapiens augeous". You can tell from the "augeous" they mean augmentations. Another curious thing to note is that they label them as Reclaimers. Anyways, even though they're labeled as a separate people it still says "Ties with group - Human".

However if you check out the Gravemind which is separate from the Flood like the Spartans, it doesn't say "Ties with group - Flood". He remains his own separate species.

In fact, in a physical sense, I don't think the Prisoner was ever physically present, but rather using the Gravemind as a conduit for his mouth. The giant venus fly trap we see in Halo 2 got completely obliterated twice, once in the Forerunner era and once in the contemporary era, yet the Gravemind still survived. And before you say the GM in Halo 2/3 is not the same as the Forerunner one, it is.

Three things: Firstly, the Proto-Graveminds are a physical entity that requires much more substantial amounts of biomass to be created then what was present at 05. Second, when the Proto-GM dies, everything in the local Flood hive else dies, and it can be killed by conventional means, which the real GM cannot. Third, he speaks as if he's extremely old and has experienced all things the Flood did 100,000 years ago and even before then.

The venus flytrap is a mouth organ, for him to speak verbally to the Chief and Arbiter. That was "destroyed" in Halo 3 during the High Charity explosion, yet GM survived again and begun rebuilding itself on the Ring. Installation 05, I believe was also glassed to kill off the Flood. He survived that too. And, according to him at the end of Halo 3, he survived the Halo detonation as well.

All of this indicates the Gravemind might not truly have ever been present, and that he was somewhere else, a long way from possibly even the galaxy, projecting his mind into the Flood.

Its this case with the Besterium that originally lead me to believe that the Gravemind was not actually present at Installation 05, High Charity or 04b, but rather the Prisoner was somehow psychically projecting his consciousness, or a part of it as the GM can apparently do so with individual Flood, to converse with Cortana.

This would also explain why he seems to exist as a non-corporeal entity.




This got me thinking a whole lot about this person and his connection with the flood, so i made a long post of my own on the picture of him.

That makes a lot of sense. I don't even know what to think right now. It could be that since the timeless one is the last of the Precursors, he was put into a place kind of like the Diadact was. The information that he could lead them to about the mantle and other things would be too important to the Forerunners. Mendicant Bias may have been in charge of getting information from the Timeless One, but his powers were to strong for Bias. Timeless One could very easily be somewhere completely safe where he could nurture more flood for the rest of his seemingly endless life. Heck it could even be possible that the flood are kind of like the new Precursors as much isn't known about them. That would explain why there is a connection between the Graveminds and the Timeless One. It could also be true that Graveminds are actually the same species as Precursors, and that the flood are just a creation of theirs. This could all be right, or all be dead wrong, but it is definitely intriguing to think about.





Any thoughts people about this person who is very important to the Halo Lore, but is practicaly unknown?

[Relapsive]

http://i342.photobucket.com/albums/o418/xringnoobx/obama-laugh-meme-generator-too-long-didn-t-read-cd4208_zps40a7c9e2.jpg

[Lil Nawty Lucia]

I have a lot of problems with it, it is an interesting read anyhow though. Gravemind is just a type of flood and in fact the flood that converted Mendicant Bias was probable something of Keymind proportion unless the books say otherwise. But the Flood have many ties with precursors though so it is indeed possible that the Prisoner was using the Flood. The Flood on the 5th Halo could have been stored as a Gravemind and not just the spores or the infection forms, or it could have grown from infecting creatures and AI. That Particular Gravemind survived the glassing buy moving itself to High Charity, either by physical relocation via a ship or it formed a new body from the Covenant it ate and transferred its consciousness.

"Child of my enemy" is vague and can either mean Ancient Humans, the Forerunners, or the Precursors who made Humans, Forerunner and the Flood. As for the Prisoner I don't think there was any proof that he escaped just he was not there anymore. The Ring firing could have destroyed him like all the Precursor artifacts. When the Gravemind speaks of imprisonment he could very well just mean being trapped on the Ring.

As for Mendicant Bias and the 5th Halo ring is wrong he had nothing to do with it, Mendicant Bias was made to control all Forerunner technology and the rings when they were built. However he was turn before the Rings were finished.

This post is all scrabbled but i think i got my points accross, i may be wrong in some parts its been a while since i Read Cryptum.

[ItsGettingMessi]

I am pretty sure, about 90%, that it was the Timeless one who turned mendicant Bias, and i knew that Bias was in charge of all the Forerunner defenses, that is just what the original person did. It is very possible what you say is true, but it is also possible the other is true, it's just something cool to think about whenever you are bored.

[Jam Cliché]

SPOILERS

SPOILER ALERT

The Flood share memories back beyond eons via a method unknown to us. It is only known that, in spite of there being multiple confirmed Graveminds at one time and many throughout the wars against the Flood, they all seem to retain the same knowledge and often will address characters as though they are all the same. Graveminds are, in this sense, still not the full embodiment of the Flood hivemind, but a major hub.

As for the origin of the Flood, this is full explained in the plot of Silentium. Ancient Forerunners rebelled against the Precursors, because the Precursors chose humans to inherit the Mantle of Responsibility. The Forerunners crusaded against Precursors, killing and driving them from the galaxy. A small battlegroup of Warrior Serveants even chased the Precursosrs beyond the galactic arm and wiped out the peaceful demigod-like race. Many Precursors, in an attempt to survive, reduced themselves to a prebiological state of existence, essentially turning into a fine power to survive and re-evolve as life on another world. This powder, over the ages, fell into disease and became something else - the spores of what would become the Flood we know today. They embraced this new, mutated, monstrous existence and chose to eliminate the threat of all violence against them and the Mantle by consuming all life and intelligence into one centralized consciousness. The events of the Forerunner Trilogy of books reveals the extent of their plans, which involve crippling the Forerunner's Ecumenistic society before ever making an attack on them, so that the Forerunners would crumble under the weight of their own mistakes.

TL;DR, The Flood ARE Precursors. The Primordial is considered the last Precursor, who never reduced itself to powder like the rest of its kind, but became among the first to be infected by the Flood, and turned into a Gravemind to serve as a messenger and harbinger to the living species of the galaxy.

[EriRi 1138]

SPOILERS

SPOILER ALERT

The Flood share memories back beyond eons via a method unknown to us. It is only known that, in spite of there being multiple confirmed Graveminds at one time and many throughout the wars against the Flood, they all seem to retain the same knowledge and often will address characters as though they are all the same. Graveminds are, in this sense, still not the full embodiment of the Flood hivemind, but a major hub.

As for the origin of the Flood, this is full explained in the plot of Silentium. Ancient Forerunners rebelled against the Precursors, because the Precursors chose humans to inherit the Mantle of Responsibility. The Forerunners crusaded against Precursors, killing and driving them from the galaxy. A small battlegroup of Warrior Serveants even chased the Precursosrs beyond the galactic arm and wiped out the peaceful demigod-like race. Many Precursors, in an attempt to survive, reduced themselves to a prebiological state of existence, essentially turning into a fine power to survive and re-evolve as life on another world. This powder, over the ages, fell into disease and became something else - the spores of what would become the Flood we know today. They embraced this new, mutated, monstrous existence and chose to eliminate the threat of all violence against them and the Mantle by consuming all life and intelligence into one centralized consciousness. The events of the Forerunner Trilogy of books reveals the extent of their plans, which involve crippling the Forerunner's Ecumenistic society before ever making an attack on them, so that the Forerunners would crumble under the weight of their own mistakes.

TL;DR, The Flood ARE Precursors. The Primordial is considered the last Precursor, who never reduced itself to powder like the rest of its kind, but became among the first to be infected by the Flood, and turned into a Gravemind to serve as a messenger and harbinger to the living species of the galaxy.


QFT

[GhostHammer]

Well done Jam. Glad someone brought that up and sorted this out.

[Spartanbh]

SPOILERS

SPOILER ALERT

The Flood share memories back beyond eons via a method unknown to us. It is only known that, in spite of there being multiple confirmed Graveminds at one time and many throughout the wars against the Flood, they all seem to retain the same knowledge and often will address characters as though they are all the same. Graveminds are, in this sense, still not the full embodiment of the Flood hivemind, but a major hub.

As for the origin of the Flood, this is full explained in the plot of Silentium. Ancient Forerunners rebelled against the Precursors, because the Precursors chose humans to inherit the Mantle of Responsibility. The Forerunners crusaded against Precursors, killing and driving them from the galaxy. A small battlegroup of Warrior Serveants even chased the Precursosrs beyond the galactic arm and wiped out the peaceful demigod-like race. Many Precursors, in an attempt to survive, reduced themselves to a prebiological state of existence, essentially turning into a fine power to survive and re-evolve as life on another world. This powder, over the ages, fell into disease and became something else - the spores of what would become the Flood we know today. They embraced this new, mutated, monstrous existence and chose to eliminate the threat of all violence against them and the Mantle by consuming all life and intelligence into one centralized consciousness. The events of the Forerunner Trilogy of books reveals the extent of their plans, which involve crippling the Forerunner's Ecumenistic society before ever making an attack on them, so that the Forerunners would crumble under the weight of their own mistakes.

TL;DR, The Flood ARE Precursors. The Primordial is considered the last Precursor, who never reduced itself to powder like the rest of its kind, but became among the first to be infected by the Flood, and turned into a Gravemind to serve as a messenger and harbinger to the living species of the galaxy.

Glad I wasn't the only one here who read Silentium XD

[Maxdoggy]

Thanks for that, Jam. I was going to have to alert Eri, GhostHammer, or Spartan to clear that up for everyone because I suck at plot summaries. Lol.

[GhostHammer]

Thanks for that, Jam. I was going to have to alert Eri, GhostHammer, or Spartan to clear that up for everyone because I suck at plot summaries. Lol.


Ah yes, the old grizzled lore fanatics who know every small detail from sniper round sizes to major shifts in the time continuum at the hands of the artifact...

Ok I'll stop right there :P