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Nice post.
Posted By: yakaman	Date: 6/10/08 12:50 p.m.
: This is how I always interpreted that terminal, but Urban Reflex makes an : interesting point about differentiating between the infection and the : host. I read three ways to interpret this information: 1. The Halo blast : kills flood outright - at least, it kills flood forms of sufficient : biomass. That matches the terminal account, but it conflicts with : everything we were told about the flood previously. : 2. The Halo blast only kills the host. This would leave Mendicant's ships : adrift, filled with forerunner corpses and swarms of infection forms that : removed themselves from the inert bodies. The infection forms live on, but : are incapable of piloting the ship, and will be destroyed as OB destroys : the fleet. : 3. The Halo blast kills infected hosts, and the infection entity, since it is : tied too deeply into the host's nervous system. (We see infection forms : reanimate "dead" combat forms, but do we ever see infection : forms retract themselves from a host in-game?) : For practical purposes, options 2 and 3 are distinctions without a difference : - the flood are not killed by the Halo blast itself, but by the : consequences thereof. : (What about pure forms?) : Where I'm going: where is it ever stated that the Gravemind was destroyed in : the Halo blast? I think it is assumed, because the galactic flood : infestation is halted (until Gravemind hijacks HC 100,000 some odd years : later, at least), but I can't remember any dialog or terminal thread that : stated it explicitly. Do we even know where the flood's "core : Mind" is during the battle and ensuing Halo blast? : We really don't know the composition of the Gravemind - we know (at most) : that the physical core is made up of at least one prophet, during Halo 2. : Especially considering the debate about flood infection vectors, re: flora : vs. fauna, is it possible that the core Mind of the Terminals survived the : blast (even if some of its sentient "components" were : destroyed), and retreated to some safe haven, to await the repopulation of : the galaxy? : The Halo Array was built prior to the deployment of Mendicant Bias. If MB : knew about the Array (did it?), we can probably assume that the Flood knew : about it. : Perhaps the Gravemind "smuggled" itself aboard Installation 05 : prior to the Halo's firing. Maybe it tried to sabotage the ring, maybe the : ring was somehow shielded from its own blast (still under debate?), maybe : because the rings are repositories of Forerunner knowledge, and GM wanted : to study its enemy in the same way the Forerunner were studying the : spores. Still doesn't explain how it would subsist for 100,000 years : without any sentience to consume (on the ring), but it explains how it got : there in the first place. I was about to be like "what do you mean we don't have any proof it kills Graveminds..." when I realized we don't. I guess I just always assumed it did. Why were the Flood building a brain form in H1? Wouldn't an existing Gravemind be sufficent? It must not be, right, since the recent WWU Smuggler messages suggest a GM has been around for at least 300 years. IMO, Halo Installations are not exempt from the Halo Effects - otherwise why even have Shield Worlds like Onyx? Think of how elaborate it was (Micro Dyson Sphere et al). Unless a Halo could make it's entire biosphere slide into slipspace, I don't see how this is likely. So...could Gravemind have survived the Halo Effect? If so, wouldn't Offensive Bias have tracked him down and destroyed him? Would Didact? I think it is imperative for the sake of the fiction to assume all Flood, including Gravemind were destroyed in the Halo Effect (exception: Infection Forms). Otherwise, with what confidence could the Forerunner execute their plan? Gravemind might be rendered powerless, but I just cannot accept that the Forerunner would overlook a still active Gravemind. No bleeping way. What if Gravemind was in a ship with SlipSpace capability? Put it this way: I'll need really, REALLY concrete evidence that Gravemind survived the Halo Effect.

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