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| Re: Visualizing the Halo Universe: Round 5 | |
| Posted By: Quirel <I_am_quirel@hotmail.com> | Date: 1/21/13 2:05 p.m. |
In Response To: Visualizing the Halo Universe: Round 5 (Postmortem) 
Yeah, this is my entry. Don't laugh, it looked better on paper.
Artificial components are woven throughout the Forerunner's body, but the most notable is the Nexus, the disk set into the stomach. In addition to allowing a deeper connection to the combat skin, it distributes air, food, medication, and surgical microchines into the body, and is where the waste is extracted. Yup. Three hundred thousand years of self-directed evolution, and the Forerunner still aren't above the bear necessities. You may note the lack of arms or legs. These were lost in the mutation, discarded as useless. If the Forerunner requires limbs, either as infantry or in polite company, prosthesis will do the job. In other roles, such as piloting starships, aircraft, or the Forerunner Tank, control is handled via direct neural interface.
In addition to the limbs, the digestive tract has been completely overhauled. The stomach is replaced with a smaller, more efficient organ which can digest actual food if necessary. That's a rare occurrence, because the combat skin recycles the body waste and returns the nutrients. The intestinal tracts are smaller and include redundancies in case of injury. The lungs are redesigned from the ground up. They are no longer bellows driven by a diaphragm, but move air through biological lobe pumps. Air circulates continuously through them and back out through the Nexus. Specialized tissue inside the lungs scrubs impurities from the air. Dust, toxins, and biological matter are all collected and excreted from the body. The skeleton. Well, let's just say that the Warrior-Servant won't be doing any crunches anytime soon, even if he did have limbs. The ribcage has been extended to cover more of the stomach, the spine extends further into the torso, and the entire body is honeycombed with strands of ceramic and a cartilage analogue. This is mostly for high-speed maneuvers. Even if the inertia dampers on a War Sphinx fail, the Warrior-Servant can still pull off maneuvers that would reduce a Human or Sangheili into runny spaghetti sauce.
The esophagus and windpipe are replaced with more connective tissue, ceramic bone, and a larger spinal cord. Safe to say, if a Forerunner Warrior Servant is decapitated, enough energy was applied to destroy the body anyway. In the meantime, the Forerunner retains enough freedom of movement to turn his head sixty degrees to either side. The head is really an aesthetic conceit. There's nothing stopping the Forerunner from relocating the brain and the sensory organs into the torso, where it would be better protected. Indeed, the body is studded with sensory microstructures, and a concentration of neural tissue exists in the space between the lungs. However, the head (and particularly, the face) is almost unanimously retained. Forerunner appreciate the ability to look into the mirror and see themselves as more than a lump of tissue, even if they won't see a mirror for decades.
Shallow pits across the face serve the same function as the nose, although the sensory data they provide is more akin to 'chemical analysis' than 'smell'. The jaw has been absorbed into the head while the mouth and nasal cavity have been re-purposed as extra room for the brain. Size does matter, especially when your job is inevitably going to involve directing hundreds of Sentinels. Inspirations:
I also leafed through my Art of Mass Effect 3 booklet, hoping to take some inspiration from the Geth. Sadly, the book was lacking, though I did borrow a few ideas from the Cannibals.
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