The Flood | Halo

[@TemplinInstitute]

Flood on over to our Twitter... and join the Gravemind of based opinions. twitter.com/TemplinEdu

[@jakespacepiratee3740]

Alright, so I know you guys tried your best, but you totally messed up the proto-gravemind lore. It goes, Proto-Gravemind > Gravemind, at that point, no more protos will be made. Keyminds are a 'recent' retcon so I cant blame you here for the confusion, but they are basically commander flood forms so yeah. Keyminds and Pureforms are also the same category of Flood. Should have asked HiddenXperia about this stuff. :/

[@chosenofkhorne2951]

Flood vs QU however wins we are not going to have a good time

[@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei]

@@chosenofkhorne2951 QU like the Qu from All Tomorrows?

[@chronus4421]

@@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei Stellaris Season 3!

[@justanotherperson7774]

Bless Your Perfection Praise the true creators 🙌

[@DerpsWithWolves]

"A universe of corpses sharing one grave." That's a great fucking line right there.

[@flandermander4952]

How tf do they always have an amazing ending line

[@jakespacepiratee3740]

@@flandermander4952 because thats literally what the Gravemind says in Halo 2 and Halo 3. They clearly picked their favorite quote from him to end the video on.

[@SuperGman117]

The only thing missing is that he should have said "a monument to all our sins" afterward.

[@TricksterPoi]

That line always haunts me.

[@Gomjibar]

I feel really stupid for just now realizing why it's called a Gravemind...

[@imperialfist2304]

“Do not be afraid, I am not your enemy. I am peace, I am salvation. I am a timeless chorus, a sweet unity of purpose. Join your voice with mine and sing victory everlasting.”

[@jakespacepiratee3740]

Bible-accurate Angels be like: ^^^

[@SuperGman117]

timeless chorus*

[@novaflame832]

Lord space marine. This is a xenos abomination. Why are you supporting it?

[@bigzed7908]

@@novaflame832 treason! Bring me his head!

[@novaflame832]

@@bigzed7908 I'm just a humble gaurdsmen.

[@argusy579]

The scariest part about the flood isn't the zombie-like horror that threatens the universe, but their implied connection with the Precursors. The Primordial, being a Precursor and being part of the Gravemind, told Ancient Humanity's top scientists such an inconvenient truth that they killed themselves being unable to come to terms with it. The Gravemind also uses facts and logic to turn AIs (designed to directly counter the flood) to do his bidding. It's demoralizing to combat and argue against a near-god level intelligence; to know that all your knowledge and ambition are not only insignificant, but maybe even counter-productive to your deepest wishes.

[@existentialselkath1264]

I can see the video title now. "gravemind destroys AI with facts and logic"

[@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei]

I think there is even some deep lore stuff behind it or at least there are some cool fan theories. Like the flood are not just some weird experiment gone wrong or a distorted version of the precursors, but flood and precursors are more like two phases of the same thing in an eternal process where they create life just to devour it at some point. The core of the precursor technology and ideology was something they called "neural physics" and it's based on the understanding of the universe as a living entity in a way behind every comprehension. So it's argued that the precursor/flood cycle was created by the living universe to experience itself and everything that can be experienced, good or bad. The precursors sow life and once the universe (or one galaxy) is densely populated they become the flood to harvest all the individuals and gather their memories and experiences and make it accessible for the living universe. So all life in the universe would just be cattle for a higher being to consume and enrich itself. And the flood hivemind is just like an upload device.

[@net343]

Then we need a the most dense guy to beat it

[@Grizabeebles]

@@net343 -- You're describing Master Chief, all right.

[@Souledex]

Precursors thoughts are woven into the fabric of space time. I have made the argument before that the flood is too. It’s already infected the Domain with the logic plague and I believe all sentient beings access that, probably when dreaming. It originally emerged from inert dust that ex nihilo began to mutate the pets of Sanshyuum and ancient humans. Given the last precursor could communicate while locked in a time-stasis vault I believe that you could kill every spore of the flood and the thoughtform in the domain or just noospheric spacetime would will the infection back into existence from inert matter somewhere in the galaxy. We can only hope the gravemind decides humans are worthy of the mantle. Or burns itself out against the AI, though given the susceptibility of even Metarchs I bet we are just more fucked.

[@Momo5775]

The first contact between the Flood and the player in Halo : CE is incredible. For all the game you fight the same aliens, you start to know them and understand how to fight them. UNSC vs Covenant. It's simple And suddently, everything changes. A new enemy, the Flood, attacking both. You don't fight it, you survive it. There was no weapons cache. You find yourself fighting againts an enemy that completly eclipses the Covenant, almost ridiculing it. I loved this plot twist

[@KindOldRaven]

Yep. As annoying (or more ''longwinded'' ) some of the flood levels could be, the twist itself was great. Really freaky as well. Plus the lore behind it all is fascinating!

[@comradekenobi6908]

Search up “scariest Halo level”

[@swivelshivel6576]

Fuck the library though

[@Lvl22Cowboy]

@@swivelshivel6576 seriously fuck the library. "Please wait here." Like hell I will

[@maxfieldjoyner5244]

I saw a thing recently about the hero villain trifecta. The basic idea is you have a hero, a villain who is basically a dark version of the hero, and the other, a character (typically a villain) who is completely different then the other two. This perfectly fits the Human/Covenant/Flood relationship.

[@dariustiapula]

Other Zombies: Ours can infect everyone and even run!. Halo Zombies: Well ours can too and drive a tank.

[@darrinscott6612]

...And are also an eldritch horror that can become near omniscient and consume galaxies.

[@nicktechnubyte1184]

Necromorphs: we're going to bring a whole new level of zombie like body horror!

[@alcatraz23atomicrenegade82]

Don't forgot using guns with accuracy.

[@jakespacepiratee3740]

@@alcatraz23atomicrenegade82 I find it funny how Dead Space fans hated it when in Dead Space 3 some Necromorphs used guns, while Halo had gun-weilding zombies from its first title and nobody was mad

[@Groza_Dallocort]

@@jakespacepiratee3740 another thing with DS3 is that they removed the tactical shooting as in you no longer had to shoot thier limbs off

[@theoneandonlyquasarsaurus]

“What is that?” “I…I am a monument to all of your sins.” Fucking badass line

[@KillerOrca]

Utterly BASED, to this very day

[@skepticalmagos_101]

Gravemind was spiting lines and spores at the same time l.

[@syntheticpew978]

btw it is "I..." but "I...?"

[@Whispergryn]

@Skeptical Guardsman it made more sense in the original trilogy because forerunners were originally human.

[@Cypherwraith001]

@@Whispergryn I honestly liked that take better. The forerunners as they are in the current Canon were retconned into existence. Prior to Halo 4, no in-game dialogue or logs suggested that Forerunners were a separate species.

[@jonbaxter2254]

One of the greatest bait-and-switches in gaming. Until then, every fight had been managable, but they fought so differently... it was so scary 343 Guilty Spark. And it knew how to do subtlety well...

[@tgagaming3104]

Once a infection establishes a grave mind, they regain all the knowledge of the previous Graveminds. The flood will always exsist due to neural physics. So, it always exsist to some extent. Basically, every Gravemind is the same 'person' an example being that the Gravemind you see in Halo 2 even after being destroyed, if another one was formed it would remember the Chief and Arbiter.

[@DoctorProph3t]

Literally never read that anywhere. Source?

[@KillerOrca]

@@DoctorProph3t Halopedia, via the Forerunner Trilogy and some of the HW2 Phoenix Logs.

[@DoctorProph3t]

@Faceless King you’re right, I wouldn’t read that overproduced tie-in toilet paper. Yeah reading about it, it doesn’t even make sense, forums have a lot of guys saying “neural physics” and uploading to some kind of Flood Cloud with no explanation for how that works. How does a gravemind that formed in one part of the galaxy 100,000 years apart relay the memories to another gravemind on another part? It’s a classic Two Generals problem. Best explanation I can find is it’s a singular consciousness made up of multiple smaller consciousnesses. Brilliant writing Greg.

[@admiralshadowofasunderedst3068]

@@DoctorProph3t firstly the forerunners trilogy is pretty good and gives us an explanation to how the forerunners lost to the flood. Secondly the reason a 100,000 year old can gravemind share information with a new Gravemind is because they're the same being

[@kjj26k]

@@DoctorProph3t The Gravemind is an omnipotent, supernatural entity. The solution to the Two Generals Problem is having only one general.

[@Razgriz_01]

The Logic Plague can also work against biological life-forms. Mainly drives the victim insane and is sent back behind their defenses to cause chaos and allow the flood to break through. I believe this happened to the Didact from Halo 4.

[@skepticalmagos_101]

Yup.

[@mariakelly1059]

"Logic Plague? Quick, somebody tell the Vulcans!"

[@PolymurExcel]

Oh, like the dementia induced by the Markers in Dead Space. Of all the Halo lore I've absorbed over the years, always cool to learn new things.

[@zombieoverlord5173]

@@PolymurExcel Yea, I might be wrong but I believe the gravemind/Primordial used the logic plaque on the Didact

[@Hust91]

@@PolymurExcel Similar, but where the markers dementia causes an actual change in your brain beyond your control, as far as I understand the logic plague is simply the ability of a compound superintelligence to be really good at persuading other beings to fulfill its wishes. Kind of like how it persuaded Chief and the Arbiter to stop the firing of the Halo array.

[@DeanmC261993]

A biological (singularity*) quantum computer that spreads as fast as air and seeks to solve the moral question of life itself, a manifestation of god’s revenge. “Do not be afraid..I am peace..I am salvation”

[@seekingabsolution1907]

More of a race of gods than a single god but yes.

[@Grizabeebles]

I wouldn't go so far as to call the Flood "godlike" when they haven't even figured out something as basic as farming, ranching and herding. The Flood could sustain itself indefinitely if it used its supercells to build plant-like structures to provide itself with energy and organs/subcreatures to create its own planet-wide nutrient cycle. At that point, it would only need to absorb what little knowledge it didn't already possess. And to do THAT, it would need to allow other species to become at least as advanced as the Forerunners before it started absorbing the occasional superintelligent AI.

[@krapto3467]

@@Grizabeebles They are by Halo's lore,a corrupted version of a godlike species. I think that may be what was meant here.

[@TheTransitmtl]

How is it a quantum computer though? Does it use qbit superposition as a form of unit of calculation? I'm not super versed in Halo lore but I never read or heard that they were anything else than a superorganism.

[@marrvynswillames4975]

@@Grizabeebles at their peak, they were indeed godlike, thankfully the halo universe is now unable to reach that level again however, spoilers from the Forerunner Saga: The flood don't care about living forever, they are made to torture and kill, the entire plan is to make all living things suffer forever, so insatiable is the hatred of the Precursors

[@Razgriz_01]

It only took the flood less than a week to fully consume High Charity. Which is basically a giant station the size of a moon. I would love for a horror story set in High Charity during its fall. Imagine, a story about an elite, a grunt, a brute, or any other covenant species, could be multiple perspective, and how they try to escape. Remember, the forerunner ship left, and that ship supplied power throughout the station. There may have additional backups, but with the civil war, the flood, and the panic, eventually High Charity would be plunged into a black-out. Running around a dark city with the flood spreading. Really would make a good horror story and show off the horror of the flood.

[@timezone107740]

A lot of people have been saying this for years. I’ve been wanting a separate game like this where you could play as a marine maybe like chips Dubo? Maybe it could still do good as a t rated game. Not sure if they’d ever go back to m rated.

[@companymen42]

Halo: The Fall of High Charity. It could be like a cross between deadspace and Star Wars republic commandos, where you play in a squad of 4 elite black ops. They could repurpose and improve the squad mechanic from halo 5 with the same machine learned bot ai from halo infinite. That would be a banger I would pay for.

[@topsy915]

@@companymen42 oh my god i would kill for a dedicated Halo flood game

[@zahylon5993]

Imagine such game, like, you're an Elite/Brute prisoner, then city goes dark and you and your cellmates escape, mostly unaware of the civil war, and then there's flood all over high charity, a survival horror where your group must find a way to escape before it's too late.

[@KattalystFr]

way less time than "less than a week"

[@AlphaFoxDelta]

"This is not your grave... but you are welcome in it" *shiver*

[@miickydeath12]

"I? I am a monument to all your sins." "There is much talk, and I have listened, through rock and metal and time. Now I shall talk, and you shall listen." "We exist together now, two corpses in one grave..." "Silence fills the empty grave, now that I have gone. But my mind is not at rest, for questions linger on. I will ask, and you will answer." "Do not be afraid. I am peace; I am salvation." "I am a timeless chorus. Join your voice with mine, and sing victory everlasting." "Lies for the weak! Beacons for the deluded!" "Now the gate has been unlatched, headstones pushed aside; corpses shift and offer room, a fate you must abide!" "Time... has taught me patience! But basking in new freedom, I will know all that I possess!" "I have beaten fleets of thousands! Consumed a galaxy of flesh and mind and bone!" "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." God I love the Gravemind's lines.

[@mariakelly1059]

Well, as James Bond would say, "Do I look like I give a damn?"

[@Forgenshoot]

His final quote is still the most mysterious to this day. I hope 343 elects to explain it someday.

[@hailarwotanaz5848]

@@Forgenshoot The gravemind is claiming his greatest strength is that he fails, and always comes back. Simply cursed to return for eternity

[@KVP424]

Aww no mention of Star road? Galactic scale flood infection are scary. When they amassed enough biomass for star road manipulation they can literally stop Slipspace FTL, and even use star road to tear planet apart. That stage is honestly extremely terrifying and cool. Though star road may no longer exist post Halo activation

[@justinpatton1091]

If I remember correctly they were made using neural physics which was susceptible to the effects from the Array.

[@KVP424]

@@justinpatton1091 I would actually goes as far as to say the best thing that came from Halo firing is the destruction of Star road. Flood return is inevitable but now they will no longer have access to the power of Star Road.

[@wearethemeta7738]

Star Road were more of a Precursor thing that the flood could control, like how they claim ship to get an interstellar age. Only worthwhile mention would have been in the war against the forerunner, but it's not relevant anymore, like all the ships and weapons they may have gotten their tentacles on at the time

[@jakespacepiratee3740]

@@KVP424 Honestly I feel like the fact that they didnt go deeper into the Flood origins and history, is because they dont care enough. For 40K, they will go into every unnecessary detail, but for something from Halo they will just go "Flood came from something idk" No mention of their chronological history, their origins, their Interstellar capabilites, or Medicant Bias... They got to get back to making Primarch videos anyways. This was a quick relevance tie-in for Templin.

[@iamdream2562]

The flood are still capable of extreme intellect with the gravemind, and can still use neural physics. Gravemind is still capable of telepathy. We know keyminds could still out-think forerunner (metarch?) Level AI. We also know with enough biomass/minds, the gravemind can corrupt slipspace to shift forerunner fleets into empty alternate universes. We know it can use neural physics to crack through dimensionally shielded forerunner super bunkers likely made of some kind of neutron star matter. In Halo 3, even with their limited capabilities, they still modified High Charity's slipspace drive to jump from near Mars all the way to the Lesser Ark just outside the galaxy in a very short time, something it took the UNSC and Covenant an enormous near country sized or larger forerunner slipspace portal to get to.

[@comm154]

“We are the last of those who gave you breath and form, millions of years ago. We are the last of those your kind defied and ruthlessly destroyed. We are the last Precursors. And now we are legion."- The Primordial

[@redlantern6669]

'We are the Flood. There is no difference. Until all time and space are rolled up and life is crushed in the folds … no end to war, grief, or pain. In a hundred and one thousand centuries … unity again, and wisdom. Until then sweetness'

[@beefsupreme3]

The Flood missions, especially the Library, drove me to near insanity on Halo: CE

[@erichunsaker4969]

Especially when the fuckers had a rocket launcher.

[@thirdplanet4471]

The Cortana mission on higher difficulties in halo 3 is something else

[@araknas3981]

@@thirdplanet4471 I remember my co-op LASO run with a bud of mine way back when. We spent more time on that fucking level than the rest of the campaign combined.

[@TruePacifist201]

@@thirdplanet4471 Cortana on Legendary is pain made manifest. Getting through the mission without picking up the rocket launcher on Pelican Hill was a Goddamn nightmare, but it was worth it in the end because I was able to grab it on the way back and carry it over to Halo.

[@lordfrostwind3151]

*But I don't want to go on the elevator* Most accurate level subtitle ever.

[@occultatumquaestio5226]

_"Spit and rage, you foolish pawn! My safety is assured. Come, join the chorus! Let me sing your bitter words."_ _"I am a monument to all your sins."_ For eldritch-like entity, one has to admit the Gravemind is quite the poet. One of the most terrifying things about the Flood is that even if the host body is destroyed, as long as even a single spore exist in the Universe, the memories & very *SOUL* of every individual consumed by the Flood shall not rest, but sing in the eternal choir of the Flood.

[@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei]

He even says a little poem at the end of Halo 2: "Silence fills the empty grave; now that I have come. But my mind is not at rest, for questions linger on." And there is another one during a dialogue with the chief and the arbiter: "This one is machine and nerve, and has its mind concluded. This one is but flesh and faith, and is the more deluded."

[@KillerOrca]

According to Human Weakness, it intentionally speaks in rhyme and pentameter because it finds normal conversation boring.

[@dianabarnett6886]

@@KillerOrca To something as vastly intelligent as the Gravemind, I imagine it would be seriously frustrating to communicate on our level.

[@KillerOrca]

@@dianabarnett6886 Very much so.

[@Punishthefalse]

Being fair, the Flood has consumed trillions of poets, which grants the Gravemind the power of verse.

[@nicktechnubyte1184]

Before there was necromorphs, there was the flood! The few starts of body horror in video games!

[@jakespacepiratee3740]

Both are really cool.

[@DoctorProph3t]

System Shock would like a word with you.

[@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei]

And before there was the flood, there was The Many from System Shock and just like the Primordial in Halo they hijacked an AI (XERXES) too serve them.

[@Grizabeebles]

The original inspiration for the flood comes from the sci-fi novel "Starhammer" by Christopher Rowley. It's also just this side thing that shows up near the end of the book. Most of the novel is about a psychic cop.

[@Sara3346]

Maybe in western video games but I'm darn sure there are much older body horror games from Japan in say the 16 bit era.

[@benhooper1956]

Of all the sci-fi infections/zombies/horrors, nothing comes close to the potential of the Flood. For me the most disturbing thing is the fact that they are the ultimate organism. They are essentially almighty, although not almighty enough to match Sgt. Johnsons badassery it must be said

[@barkdawg]

Hoorah

[@seekingabsolution1907]

Arguably the Tyranids are a similar scale of threat, but they don't seem to be able to assimilate knowledge the way the flood can.

[@benhooper1956]

@@seekingabsolution1907 From what I know of WH40k lore (I am not very well versed in it) they would seem to be about equivalent, although in the case of the Tyranids they seem easier to fight if you have a big enough gun

[@karlfranzemperorofmandefil5547]

Laughs in the Protomolecule

[@takebacktheholyland9306]

Well, If we're talking disturbing in different ways. Flood is the most scariest because of their intelligence, The tyranids are the most scariest with their unending scale and myriads of tactics(Like man, on 40k these fuckers have alot going for them like the shadow in the warp and Genestealer cults) whilst I think in apperance the most scariest has to go to the necromorphs like, jesus the necromorphs might not be a strong or mass scale as the prior threats but, just look at it. You need no lore implications to know that it's terrifying

[@rexlumontad5644]

Flood: *"HEY KIDS WANNA SEE A DEAD BODY?!"* Everyone: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

[@andrewpandrew7786]

Party party party

[@awesomehpt8938]

Fate had us meet as foes but this ring will make us brothers.

[@seekingabsolution1907]

Now the gate has been unlatched, head stones pushed aside. Corpses shift and offer room, a fate you just abide.

[@HTWW]

Silence fills the empty grave, now that I am gone. But my mind is not at ease, for questions linger on.

[@MrPotatoTitan]

This is a little more esoteric lore. But in one of the Halo terminals, a monitor mentions the reason why forerunners have kept infection forms around in laboratories is because they NEED to be studied and beaten. Because the forerunners expect more flood to be out there. In galaxies unexplored. And they're coming.

[@J117-t2g]

Yeah super necessary. The Gravemind could simply send infected ships into hyperspace with automatic redeploy years after the halo array firing.

[@ThePalaeontologist]

The most dangerous and powerful aspect of the Flood, is their propensity towards 'acquiring' and preferential goal of preying on intelligent life. The Flood were so horrifically dangerous during the Forerunner-Flood War, precisely _because_ of the nature of their prey. The Forerunners tried a thousand other plans and one, before the final resort of firing the HALO arrays. The true horror of the Flood came through their transcendental potential as they ascended closer to full galactic dominion in the Milky Way. To contextualise the raw might of the Forerunners, the Forerunner Ecumene at it's height of power could have casually crushed the entire Star Wars galaxy in a matter of days. Trillions of hyper-intelligent warrior-servants, quadrillions of sentinels and advanced AI so complex that they were in a sublime state of power in the Milky Way as the ultimate power in the galaxy among peers. Though never fully dominant over the entire galaxy, their rule was 'as good as' that. 3 million inhabited worlds, nearly a thousand shield worlds (entire planetoid sized megastructures designed to be self-sustaining military bastions and war factories) The raw power of the Forerunners in even it's least subtle sense, was staggering. A clear Type II K-Civilisation, bordering on a lower tier Type III. In terms of their esoteric and holistic power, in softer forms not only harder and more obvious forms of direct military power, the Forerunners were utterly untouchable for most of the other species of the galaxy. Only the Ancient Human-San-Shy'uum Alliance dared to truly defy them and even then, they lost badly; albeit costing the Forerunners very dearly) Yet at no point were the already extremely powerful Ancient Humans - themselves rivalling the Forerunners technologically in at least some regards - any more than a tenth as powerful as the Forerunners at that time. The Flood turn the intelligence and greatest strengths of a civilisation against itself. When the Primordial spoke with the incredible Forerunner super-AI construct known as Mendicant Bias, a Contender-class AI of staggering technological achievement (even by the standards of the Forerunner Ecumene, which literally _ran on AI_ for millions of years), conversation was intended as an interrogation of the bizarre entity that was the Primordial. Sadly for the few Forerunners whom even knew this was happening, there was no realisation that the Primordial itself was the one interrogating Mendicant Bias. The Primordial, being the strange hybrid of an ancient Primordial survivor and a Flood Gravemind. He was the Flood, in other words; that transcendental being and hateful spirit which drove it's will. He was the legacy and memory of a largely if not almost entirely, save himself, destroyed species. A species, overthrown by it's creations; the Forerunners. The Precursors had degenerated and in their hatred for the Forerunners, so was sown the seeds of the Flood as they were contaminated remnants of transcendental Precursor 'dust' (protein powder they'd allowed themselves to 'hide' in the form of, 10 million years earlier when the Forerunners rose up and purged them from the galaxy and also Path Kethona beyond) The nightmare reality for the Forerunner Ecumene in the Forerunner-Flood War, was that the more they fought it, the stronger it got, exponentially worsening the situation and hastening their own defeat. However, they could not avoid fighting the invasive Flood. They didn't call them the Flood for nothing; they did as their name suggests, flooding over the galaxy, creating what the Forerunners referred to as 'burns' - entire sectors absolutely ruined by the Flood, caked in it's foulness. As utterly lethal in conventional technological terms the Forerunners were, that very power and technological intelligence, was of course their Achille's Heel against the Flood. The fact that it took the Primordial 43 years to 'convert' Mendicant Bias to the Flood so to speak, which was a complete disaster of epic proportions for the Forerunners, is neither here nor there; what matters is that it happened, not that it took 43 years of constant conversation for the Primordial to 'win' in that sense. It subverted the subroutines and programming of the super AI construct. It was a poet of unfathomable intelligence; abominable intelligence. It - the Primordial - referred to beings themselves tens of thousands of years old, as 'children'. It referred to the immensely influential and powerful Forerunner military leader, the Didact himself, as 'young one', mockingly. Just to put this into context, the Didact was the co-creator of Mendicant Bias alongside Faber, the Master Builder - perhaps an even more legendarily powerful (albeit corrupt and cruel) Forerunner from the Builder caste. To give more context, the Didact could memorise extremely numerical codes from 100,000 years before the 25th century, and recite them like a computer program might, off by heart, as if it was nothing, and make complex strategic, tactical and mathematical calculations easily in a split second. He was a genius of epic proportions even among his already hyper-intelligent race; and he was a warrior-servant and a brilliant general even by his own people's standards. Such a powerful Forerunner, easily capable of defeating Master Chief quite casually in a direct engagement. In fact, compared to him, Master Chief was a child running around in sub-par civilian armour (Forerunner combat suites were so advanced that Mk II Spartan Armour as seen in the earlier HALO releases, would be considered essentially, just a civilian quality armour suit; technically not even good enough to be compared to civilian tier tech) The Forerunner's best armour was on a totally different level. They were beyond description for the UNSC because it was simply too advanced for them to understand. Even the best and most recent Spartan armour is probably way, way inferior to even bog standard Forerunner combat suits. Yet they lost anyway. And the Primordial regarded the Didact, for all his skill and intelligence, as a child. It argued against the philosophy of the makers of Mendicant Bias, _to Mendicant Bias_ and although it took literally 43 years to overwhelm the logic subroutines of the super AI with the Logic Plague, it did it. Suddenly, entire swathes of Forerunner AI were converted to the purposes of the Flood, as Mendicant Bias turned on the Forerunner Ecumene. This did staggering damage to the Forerunners early on, and was a key turning point. The lost of so many AI systems made it extremely difficult to contain the spread of the Flood as coordination efforts flagged and strategic situations were plunged into despair on many battle-fronts. How could they fight and win if their own AI augmentations were aiding and abetting the advance of the Flood? How could basic transportation systems, life support systems and communications systems, function properly? Of course, a lot of Forerunner AI remained loyal or was simply, 'not yet corrupted for the time being', but as the Flood Graveminds multiplied and the transcendental power of the Flood became greater and greater, the situation snowballed hellishly out of control. To contain such evil, you must defeat it early, before it gets off the ground; to stamp it out before it gains traction and gains the upper-hand (or, upper appendage stalk thingy) Ultimately, the Flood were able to gain enough of a foothold/claw-grip over the galaxy to capitalise on that initial victory, and then refuse to be purged. No matter how hard the Forerunners fought, no matter how many untold millions of Flood forms were scorched from the face of the galaxy, no matter how valiantly entire armies of Forerunner warrior-servants fought and died on countless untold and forgotten battlefields, against billions upon billions of Flood, the sad reality was that they could not be stopped. The deluge of the Flood had drowned entire star systems before they could fight back properly. With Mendicant Bias wielding all it's intelligence and coordination capability against the Forerunners, they had to create another like it to try and fight back. A more constrained, seemingly limited super AI, called Offensive Bias. As it turned out, Offensive Bias would understand the weaknesses of Mendicant Bias perfectly, and do more than simply counter it; in the end, Offensive Bias _defeated and humiliated_ Mendicant Bias at war. Think of it like Ares/Mars defeating Zeus/Jupiter. A god-like warfare specialised AI. It was lethal. But for most of the 300 year long war, Offensive Bias was not complete and of course not actively used against Mendicant Bias yet. It would, eventually, have a staggeringly tough baptism of fire in the late phases of the war, in which the war was all but lost already. At that point, Offensive Bias was merely hoped to slightly delay the final Flood victory, so that the HALO arrays could fire. Offensive Bias suffered defeats earlier on, though learnt far more than it might have been guessed to have by it's makers, from those defeats. In the final moments of the war, Offensive Bias would achieve an astonishing victory over Mendicant Bias; though sadly, this was by then, a smaller circle within a larger circle of the final destruction of the Forerunner Ecumene, anyway. At that point, 'victory' was simply a matter of denying the Flood from stopping them from having it _all_ their own way and denying them the rest of the biomass of the sentient life of the galaxy. [Part 1/3; parts 2+3 in replies below]

[@ThePalaeontologist]

[2/3] If a civilisation as absolutely epic in power by Type II K-civilisation standards, whom had ruled a vast swathe of the Milky Way Galaxy for over 10 million years, with a species history dating back over 15 million years, could so horrifically begin to lose the war against the Flood, it really doesn't bode well for *a lot* of other sci-fi factions. The Galactic Empire in Star Wars, for instance, wouldn't stand a hope in hells chance of beating the Flood. Absolutely not. They'd just feed the Flood and lose control of the command ships of the Imperial Navy within weeks and then the rest would be an inevitability. The same goes for the CIS - anyone think Droid intelligence in SW would fare so well against the Flood's Logic Plague? More than likely, entire Battle Droid armies would get converted to the Flood in a matter of hours. It'd be a nightmare. Even if field units like the B1's are simply too dumb to be altered by the Flood, their control ships and strategic control hubs would not be. Fighting the Flood successfully, requires a complete denial of intelligent biomass. Otherwise it will remain limited to a relatively feral state. Say the Flood overrun a world in a state of Medieval level technology, then they won't be able to use starships anytime soon. In fact, the Gravemind leading the Flood will be desperate for better sources of prey. By fighting and consuming billions if not trillions of Forerunners, the Flood reached an unimaginable level of power by their own standards. They'd started to produce Keyminds (advanced Graveminds only even more dangerous) and they'd started to be able to use the transcendental Star Roads of the Precursors from whence they derived. They began to grasp 'Neural Physics' (a bizarre and esoteric field of Precursor technology and/or philosophy, that was really about the ability to go beyond technology and to achieve multi-dimensional abilities) Living constructs from the living universe, things that defy the conventional wisdom of even Forerunner technology. Again, to contextualise this, individual Forerunner warrior-servants, themselves, could be considered absolute geniuses in the context of the 21st century real world of humanity. To a man they'd be considered extremely intelligent beings with advanced computational, statistical, mathematical, literary and artistic abilities. They are simply way, way more advanced than we can comprehend. Thus writing them always falls short of what they are meant to be. Because it's us, writing about them. The point is, the Flood would gain terrible levels of knowledge and wisdom. Dreadful levels of understanding; by which I mean, a whole lot. For instance, imagine the repercussions of a single Forerunner Promethean Knight falling to the Flood. Everything he ever knew, subsumed and consumed into the Gestalt Hive Mind intelligence of the Gravemind. Instantly, all his fears, loves, hopes, dreams, memories and knowledge would be laid bare to the Flood. All the places he had been, all the things he had seen. All the military secrets and training regimens he might know. All the ways in which such knowledge could be used against his own kind - made all the worse, by the fact that his literal bodily biomass itself would be reincorporated into the Flood as a part of them. The Forerunners were literally fighting their own family, friends and other loved ones. They were literally forced to burn with fire the distorted mockeries of their own fallen brethren and kin. A horror beyond horrors because they knew defeat would mean their own corpses would attack their own family, friends and loved ones; because they knew that the Flood would drown the galaxy under it's own abominable intelligence, because it stole theirs. Without realising, even the Forerunners got complacent early on, playing to different and more conventional rules of war, and not seeing the iceberg until it was far too late. Worse; it had been premeditated by the Primordial for thousands of years, since the Human-Forerunner War which released him from his stasis chamber. The grim irony, being that he was released by the test firing of an earlier version of the HALO, on Charum Hakkor. His plan was to use the Flood to destroy the Forerunners. Humanity thought they had cured it; though in reality, their sacrifice of a full 1/3 of their people, billions upon billions on hundreds of planets sacrificed deliberately to the Flood, was a lie. In one stroke, humanity had weakened itself while making a nuisance of itself to the territorially aggressive Forerunners nearby, whom did not appreciate Human warships orbitally purging entire Forerunner outlier worlds at the edges of Forerunner space. This was understandably seen as Human duplicity, and reacted to with immediate scorn and violence. The Humans were trying to stop the spread of the Flood, though failed to properly communicate this apparently. Perhaps it was convenient to them to kill two birds with one stone. Yet they would be reprimanded by the Didact (and to say, 'reprimanded' is putting it a bit mildly by way of British understatement; he literally and figuratively sent them back to the stone age; they had been a space-faring super-civilisation on par with the Forerunners; fifty years later, they were in loin cloths under Forerunner observation at all times) It cost the Forerunners dearly as millions perished to achieve their victory (including two of the sons of the Didact) Yet humanity was defeated badly. Just as the Primordial wanted. Just as the Primordial hoped; and yet, for all that, the Primordial's primary goal was to weaken and test the power of the Forerunners. The humans were just the fall guys whom the Flood were already in process of defeating before he used the opportunity to test just how powerful the Forerunners were, thousands of years before the Forerunner-Flood War. After the war, the Forerunners needed centuries and indeed millennia to recover; and all the while, the massive numbers of the Flood hiding in the areas of space surrendered to the Flood by the humans already, multiplied and multiplied further. Over 8,000 years later, they would attack the Forerunners with all they had, to ensure a foothold against them, to expand upon as the war progressed. It was a total disaster, thousands if not millions of years in the making. The Forerunners, essentially stood no chance of victory - unless that is, they worked out what exactly was happening, and destroyed the Flood wholesale in a berserk retribution war of annihilation. That, did not happen. It would take decades of war for the Forerunners to realise, and by then, it was too late. It lasted 300 years. Arguably, they might have effectively lost, within the first 25 years. The rest was just going through the motions if you think about it. There would come a point of no return moment, where even if the Forerunners realised the full-extent of what was going to happen to them and their entire civilisation, they couldn't do anything to stop it short of flipping the entire table so to speak, and killing everything intelligent in the galaxy. It left the lofty Forerunners in a completely untenable and impossible situation, trapped by their own inability to counter such a massive and widespread plague. Entire starfleets of unimaginably powerful Forerunner vessels, fought and were destroyed by the Flood. Entire planets were sundered and entire megastructures overrun. They fought with a fury of a people cornered on the galactic plane, of a people whom were once the consummate rulers of the galaxy incarnate. They fought not as arrogant and complacent fools, but self-aware bioengineers and strategic geniuses. Yet they still lost. Because how could they get away with a clean victory over the Flood after even a million, let alone a billion of their kind had been taken by the Flood? Trying to put into words how FUBAR the situation was for the Forerunners say, 50 years plus into the war, is difficult, because we still don't know exactly how everything happened. There is boundless potential for writers to fill those missing areas of HALO history. However, whatever happened, we know the outcome. Victory after victory would be won by the Forerunners; yet all the same, the attritional price of such victories, would eventually spell their doom. If anything, it is impressive that the Forerunners lasted 300 years in such a conflict, largely fighting corrupted forms of their own people and their own constructs. To their credit, the fact it took the most powerful Flood infestation the galaxy has ever known, 300 years to drive the Forerunners to the final sanction of the full HALO array firing, says a lot about the strength of arms of the Forerunners. The Flood would have gotten their mouldy asses beaten a ridiculous number of times during that war. But still they kept coming, still they kept despoiling and taking that which didn't belong to them. Still they ruined lives on 3 million worlds and more. What must not be forgotten either, is that the actual number of planets and planetoids etc that the Flood overran, would have been far greater than 3 million; everyone caught in the middle of the Forerunners and the Flood, were always fair game for the Flood. The Forerunners tried to protect them but were often barely able to protect their own people. The lifeworker caste - especially their leader, the Forerunner known as the Librarian, the wife and lover of the Didact - knew all too well that countless species might be being lost, consumed by the Flood. As the Flood spread further and encroached deeper into Forerunner space, the chances are entire sentient species were wiped out without even having been recorded by the Forerunners, in spite of it happening under their noses, in their territory/former territory.

[@ThePalaeontologist]

[3/3] 3 million planets sounds like a lot, but galaxy wide it is a small number. Clearly, the Forerunners held strongholds and exerted imperial power from such keystone worlds, and then the Flood could target those and many other planets under that planet's sphere of influence, would be in direct danger. Therefore, I would fully expect the Forerunners to be heavily engaged on literally hundreds of thousands of planets _simultaneously_ later in the war (say, half way in) Their resources, buckling and straining under the logistical pressure amounting to a nightmare, even for their immensely intelligent civilisation. Half their AI would probably belong to the Flood even before that point; and they would tighten protocols on the AI that remained under their control; though with Mendicant Bias at large, they were never truly safe. One of those days, Mendicant Bias might work out a way to gain full control of all the Forerunner AI. Luckily for the Forerunners, they just about managed to keep in the fight and hold on, somehow. Again, a testament to their power and abilities. Even in the horrendous predicament they were in, they fought bravely and defiantly. What had taken them millions of years to build up, into a state of blissful surety, would not be meekly given up; even though it had now turned into a hellish war to protect only a tiny vestige of the majesty they had once held. The revenge of the Precursors was at hand, all the same. When the Didact finally realised what the Primordial had done, when he finally understood the horrific nature of his plans, he angrily had the Primordial aged in a chamber (the effects of billions of years in a matter of seconds), killing even this creature immediately. However, he regretted doing so; because although he destroyed the body, the horrifying reality was that it still telepathically spoke to and mentally tortured the Didact (for the subsequent 100,000 years) P.S - As much as I like and enjoy the story of the Forerunners, there are other sci-fi factions far better suited to tackling the bane of the Forerunners, the Flood. For example, the Time Lords and Daleks from Doctor Who, could wreck the Flood if given enough time to realise what it is. They were both, at their peak, simply way smarter than the Forerunners. Different leagues of power. Time Lords went beyond the feats of the Precursors. As much as I like the Forerunners, they are more of a middling power in sci-fi (considered Gods in the HALO universe, by lesser civilisations, though in truth, they were just as fallible as mankind and other aliens beyond the borders of the Forerunner Ecumene) The Tyranids and Necrons from W40K could probably wipe the floor with the Flood, assuming several things that is. At the very least, a Flood VS Tyranid War (as I have speculated several times over the years on KZbin) would be a nightmare of epic proportions. Yes, the Nids will nomnomnom an unholy number of Flood, yet the Flood Super-Cell could evolve to be more impactful against - themselves constantly evolving - Tyranids) It'd unleash an Octarius War-like arms race between them. It'd make the Flood terrifying, even more so than they already are. It'd make the Tyranids, well, basically unstoppable. If they converged and merged it'd be Goodnight Vienna for anyone still unlucky enough to be watching them fight. The problem for the Flood, is that they need a lot of intelligent biomass to progress and evolve. They won't find that in most of the Tyranids, at all (with notable exceptions) However, the Flood would obviously be a banquet for the Tyranids, on a constant basis. Even if it was stanky and disgusting food to human eyes, the Nids would love the Flood. But that said, this does assume staggering numbers of Nids _won't_ just get Flood infected on the spot for having the audacity to chomp on the Flood. We know that Nurgle plagues could literally dissolve the proboscis off of the Tyranids if they tried to eat the vileness of Nurgle corrupted forms; but the question is, how would that really be compared to the Flood Super-cell? I've seen W40K fans claim that the Flood would just be a mild/light disease compared to what Nurgle can cook up, but there isn't really any evidence for that. The Flood is much, much, much, much older than Nurgle. At least in a linear sense. Also, comparing totally different universes is kind of weird and awkwardly clunky, because it demands we make a whole lot of assumptions about a whole lot of things. Essentially, I'd resolve it that the initial waves of Tyranids eating the Flood would die, but that the Tyranid Hive Mind _could_ work out a way to become resistant to it. The moment that happens, if the Flood don't continue to evolve, they will certainly lose. Note: the Flood has never been cured by anyone, not even the Forerunners. By sheer weight of numbers, the Nids could likely drown the Flood, ironically. However, I'd still not say it would go all their way. Their combat forms are simply superior to the known Flood combat forms, but this doesn't mean they wouldn't evolve new ones to fight the Nids. Similarly, the Nids will directly respond to the Flood by adapting to them. You'd see Tyranid forms firing more bio-dissolving acid appear, and more forms capable of firing incendiary bio-liquid (like a living flamethrower) Think, Bombadier Beetle, on steroids, crossed with the Tyranids. They'd work out ways of tackling hordes of Flood better. Also think: the flame units among the Arachnids in Starship Troopers. Those kinds of things. The two would leap frog each other until everything else in the galaxy was dead and all that mattered then was whom had more teeth and claws. In which case, I'm just gonna give the win to the Nids hands down. But here is where it gets curious; depending on which intelligent life the Flood had been consuming, to bolster themselves against the Nids, will the Flood be able to wield powerful warships against the Nids? If we're talking Galactic Empire from SW, then even if the Flood have control of about 10,000 Imperial Star Destroyers/out of 25,000 estimated at the height of the Empire's power, then against the Nids, that probably won't be enough. It could be a fleet they could use to immense effect against the Tyranids. Plus, the majority of Tyranid forces will be travelling at sub-light speeds, whereas the Flood can anticipate, outmanoeuvre and outfight them depending on what tech they stole from the intelligent third party factions. If we're talking about the Time Lords from Doctor Who? Oh boy, oh boy. Then the Flood now have time machines and a superweapon called the Moment which can vapourise entire galaxies and species upon the word of command (if _she_ feels in the mood not to destroy the user instead, which would be debatable regarding how the Moment would feel about the Flood Graveminds/Keyminds trying to use....her to such evil ends) Assuming the Time Lords haven't just roflstomped the Flood out of the universe with their massively superior technological capabilities (bordering on magic) then they could end up giving such power to the Flood. Imagine time-travelling Flood. Not good. The Daleks meanwhile would be another matter, entirely.

[@miickydeath12]

this was a really good read.

[@ThePalaeontologist]

@@miickydeath12 Thank you kindly.

[@RylisPro]

@@ThePalaeontologist Aren't the Endless time-travelling Flood?

[@loach5348]

The greatest villain of all time. The horror is like no other in sci-fi.

[@Dowman2005]

What about the borg?

[@SuperGman117]

@@Dowman2005 The borg have less of a "scary" factor, in my opinion.

[@iona2225]

@@Dowman2005 *Laughs in Voyager*

[@Groza_Dallocort]

Necromorps?

[@ChaosLierLen]

The Zerg from Starcraft seem pretty horrifying.

[@UGNAvalon]

Missed opportunity to have the Gravemind interfere with the broadcast, with the implication that the Logic Plague has already subverted Templin defensive AI.

[@awesomehpt8938]

Now the gate has been unlatched headstones pushed aside. Corpses shift and offer room, a fate you must abide.

[@Insanir]

"Silence fills the empty grave, now that I have gone. But my mind is not at rest, for questions linger on."

[@GrandmasterDevo]

"There is much talk, and I have listened, through rock and metal and time. Now, I shall talk, and you will listen..."

[@tyshingleton7005]

On a biological basis, the Flood is the most terrifying alien in sci-fi. Especially considering they could grow intelligent enough to use Forerunner tech.

[@KillerOrca]

And worse; PRECURSOR. See weaponized Star roads

[@nobleman9393]

@@voomvoom4522 They are too generic

[@KillerOrca]

@@voomvoom4522 Nids rely on direct action to gain biomass. They engage in standard equal-ground warfare to overwhelm planets and consume them. The Imperium has seen them off more than once through attrition and proper application of heavy force. And Space Marines, of course. They CAN be subtle, but thats usually through things like Genestealer cults, which can take decades or even centuries to fully settle down and take over. The Flood simply arrives when it sees fit, infects everything with a nervous system within hours of making landfall, refuses to elaborate, and then leaves, taking not just the biomass but every useful weapon, vehicle, ship and piece of tech with it. What the Nids can do in a couple of months, the Flood can do in a week.

[@KillerOrca]

​@@voomvoom4522 That means they dont get to use the strongest weaponry of their enemy against them. Imagine if the Nids could steal Imperial ships, or Tau vessels with their railguns, or even Aeldari star-sailers. Whatever strengths you have, the Flood will turn it against you. The nids have to worry about preserving biomass, because thats how they grow and feed. The Flood merely seeks SENTIENCE ITSELF, intelligence, species as a whole. Their forms do not matter. The Flood merely takes without though.

[@DCPTF2]

still weaker then the Tyranids by a whole lot

[@sinakeyhani929]

The Flood makes Xenomorph look like a harmless innocent kitten. Probably the most terrifying creature- zombie in the whole Sci-Fi timelines.

[@OffworldYT]

Like water I ebb and flow, defeat is only the addition to a sentence I never deserved.

[@TheDaltonius]

Everyone: they’re just mindless Gravemind: *wheeze*

[@Onebadterran]

Honestly, this makes me hype for a Halo game where everyone is on the same side just fighting the flood.

[@SineFineBelliCh]

This is why incendiary munitions are invented

[@orange8420]

Flood : finally a worthy opponent Tyranids :our battle will be legendary

[@pigpig252]

The gravemind was one of the best parts of Halo 2. Its dialogue was pure poetry

[@dianabarnett6886]

*Now the gate has been unlatched, headstones pushed aside; corpses shift and offer room, a fate you must abide!*

[@rayhatton7683]

As I hold an AR I answer this with gunfire.

[@Phantom6.6.6]

What's more terrifying is even after the flood is killed the moment it reaches Gravemind level again who ever it ate last will have their conscience reawaken once again. Once the flood have you you never escape as they always find a way back and drag everyone back to hell with them

[@Raipongai]

The flood were scary before but now that ive read this im even more horrified

[@exponenttie9707]

"I am a monument to your sins" Amazing and ICONIC line, and it fits, the Forerunners went to war with the Precursors to take the Mantel of Responsibility, the Precursors turning themselves into dust to make sure their species survives, but that dust gets corrupted then lands on a human world on the edge of their empire millions of years later, the humans and the ancient prophets decide to feed it to dog like creatures, and then the flood is born

[@perrycarters3113]

That final line is fucking bone-chilling. The Flood is genuinely the MOST terrifying enemy I've come across in fiction, simply because the only way to defeat them would be the utter eradication of every single spore, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to ever know if you've truly succeeded. Their terror could lurk in the smallest pocket of the galaxy, undisturbed for eons. Waiting.

[@Bugattiboy912]

That subscription off the Byf collab already paying dividends for me.

[@noheroespublishing1907]

"We are the Flood. There is no difference. Until all space and time are rolled up and life is crushed in the folds ... no end to war, grief, or pain. In a hundred and one thousand centuries ... unity again, and wisdom. Until then -sweetness." - The Primordial (The Gravemind)

[@IceLordCryo]

I love the Flood!! Arguably the scariest intergalactic parasite zombie in videogame history!

[@jinsai8064]

The flood is one of the few childhood boogeymen that still genuinely terrify me

[@sebw1744]

Still can't get through 343 guilty spark without getting scared. Been like 20 years just set perfectly to be terrifying no matter how many times you play.

[@jinsai8064]

@@sebw1744 Lol same. Even though I listen to the halo and other game's soundtracks, devils... monsters... still gets my heart racing

[@awesomehpt8938]

Silence fills the empty grave now that I have gone. But my mind is not at rest for questions linger on. I will ask and you will answer.

[@awesomehpt8938]

I am a timeless chorus. Join your voice with ours and sing victory everlasting!

[@kafs1822]

Ahhh the flood, right up there with xenomorphs and the many from system shock 2 in my list of stuff from Nopesville

[@eanschaan9392]

I think the reason the flood is so iconic is that not only is it grotesque, it appears in a game that is otherwise very much not a horror game. Combine that with the existential question it poses, and you have a uniquely terrifying enemy.

[@tristancrowe9834]

“A universe of courses, sharing one grave” that is the most bad ass line for the flood I have ever herd.

[@amazingbro6723]

Awesome the flood, haven't seen a in depth look at an parasite since the warhammer 40k one

[@lordofchromius8206]

Hah, the Flood. One of the most terrifying things to ever be created when it comes to twisted things to exist in fiction. Considering that the only way to ensure that it ceased to be a threat involved executing a galaxy-wide sterilization xenocide program. Not to mention that they are the closest thing to an actual perfect/ultimate lifeform compared to say other "ones" that fail miserably.

[@casbot71]

The Flood could well be engineered. A final FU from the Precursors to the Forerunners …payback.

[@KurstKensei]

The scariest thing about the flood to me, is that if you're being used as biomass to make a Gravemind. You get to watch as all your memories are erased right before your eyes as you slowly forget who you are.

[@thegodofalldragons]

The Flood certainly are a cool villain, though I don't mind that we haven't seen much of them post-Halo 3. Like the Borg, they're really not an enemy you can use a lot because they're ludicrously overpowered (they have to be for the role they play in the story). If they ever win, the series is over, and if they lose over and over, they become a joke.

[@emeraldtheprotogen523]

I do get a bit annoyed we havent seen them in a while but reading this I can understand, if they kept adding the flood in every game they would just become the weeping angels from Doctor who (they become a joke) so I do understand now

[@codyyoung5946]

Great vid, one small thing though, a Gravemind is the highest local authority for the Flood, we simply don't know what the actual main hivemind looks like because, fortunately for the galaxy, the flood have been unable to build up to the levels they were during the Forerunner-Flood War, but that makes them even more terrifying. Graveminds are smarter than even the best scientists in all species, and they are more equivalent to generals and governors than supreme commanders, let alone the Hivemind itself And that is why I fear the flood more than anything else in every universe, we have barley scratched the iceberg and already we are finding entities more intelligent than anything else. We haven't even seen anything from the Forerunner-Flood War yet. And the only way the galactic superpower was able to stop them was by nuking the galaxy, if they come back in full force, not even a united front across the galaxy would be able to stop them.

[@Punishthefalse]

It is when the Gravemind evolves into a Keymind that you should contemplate giving up. Or cleansing the galaxy of all life.

[@Monarch_Prime]

*Flood theme aggressively plays*

[@jakespacepiratee3740]

They should have played that video in the background honestly.

[@awesomehpt8938]

We exist together and now two corpses in one grave.

[@rexlumontad5644]

Brother, get the Flamer. *THE HEAVY FLAMER!*

[@SaviourSword995]

Na. You need super heavy flamer for this

[@dianabarnett6886]

You better skip the flamer and go straight to Exterminatus. It's your only chance.

[@barracuda6900]

"Stand firm - the Flood is upon us!" Rtas Vadum, who knows first-hand how dangerous the flood is, and lived to tell the tale.

[@keeps19]

The Library remains one of the moments in gaming that will stay with me for as long as I live. A near-perfect game level imo.

[@monad5140]

The Flood are easily the most terrifying alien concept in sci-fi. Just a homogenized unending disease that cannot be resisted. Like the necromorphs and Reapers rolled into one.

[@masterchief5603]

If that was terrifying then primodial's theory of what he said to humans interrogating it might really creep like hell.

[@McGuireMotionProductions]

12:13 “A timeless courous may yet arise again, one that joins every voice of the galaxy together to sing victory everlasting. A universe of corpses, sharing one grave” Oh god, NOT COMMUNISM! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[@duo496]

A monument to all our sins

[@Spartan2818]

The Keymind was above the Gravemind. They formed as the flood consumed entire chunks of the galaxy at a time. They were planet sized Graveminds

[@ebonygyro8736]

Not anymore, unfortunately. They changed the keyminds lore.

[@MartiniPinball]

The reveal of the flood was one of gamings greatest moments.

[@ravenouself4181]

Flood: Absorbs me Flood: Sees my search history Flood: Commits suicide

[@emeraldtheprotogen523]

Fair enough

[@PrimisSanguis]

I was so young when halo came out that I couldn’t pass the first flood level due to sheer terror. My older cousin had to do it for me 😂

[@anjoedaviscatholic9143]

"The parasite did not defeat the forerunners, and it shall not defeat us!"

[@lieutenantdan9337]

When the Flood and the Tyranids encounter each other, bad things happen...

[@dinodude6992]

Extremely bad things that is...

[@turnerthe75themperor19]

They will breed. The gravemind will merge with the hive mind. All the knowledge of the gravemind combine with the vast scale of the hive mind will create an even bigger, more complex collective consciousness. Flood's supercell will merge with the tyranid's vast array of genetic material to create billions of abominations that are infective and *hungry* and can adapt to anything poses a threat to it

[@SaviourSword995]

That would make chaos threat a toddler in comparison

[@the_w4nd3r3r5]

“I am the monument to all of your sins.”

[@canadianragin]

Props for using the phrase "to which" correctly!

[@ihavenoname4139]

When they mentioned the covenant being dismantled and spread apart, and humanity being in complete tatters makes me think that if the flood isn't in the main campaign for halo infinite, there will definitely be a DLC in the future where the flood return in full force to take over the galaxy

[@thekingzhaul5914]

Okay, now this has to be one of your best perfomances yet narrator. The way that you talk about these creatures in a matter of fact way but still have a sense of fascination or wonder just gives me goosebumps and the music also helps in the atmosphere of the video. Now I wonder how would you do something with The Necromorphs from Dead Space, who are basically something like a little more scarier but overall weaker version of The Flood.

[@TekaKatar]

Ah yes, finally! I have been waiting for this

[@noiverngaming055]

Great video, found it interesting. I am a huge halo fan so I was happy to see this.

[@goldygames5415]

This video is so well done I feel like I'm in a university lecture the only difference being I actually want to learn

[@ne3333t]

I just had a fascinating conversation about halo lore with the person cutting my hair at great clips

[@blackdog6969]

One thing this made me think about is why the Flood kept inside the shielded High Charity are still intact. Sure the Rings destroy neuro tissue which the Flood rely on to evolve through their stages but the Gravemind from Delta Halo appears at the very least to have created a copy on High Charity. Knowing it can communicate through other forms over range, it makes sense that there wasn't a Gravemind on 04-A suggesting it may have survived inside High Charity and potentially Delta Halo. Really do hope to see it make the move to Zeta Halo in future dlc, especially if there's 2 Graveminds. That is just a pure apocalyptic scenario right there and opens up some great storytelling assuming they use it well

[@chaossausage3940]

This narrator has the best voice on youtube for any fantasy race

[@kingscrump]

The Flood are still my favorite parasite, hivemind, bodyhorror race in any universe from any media. And don’t get me wrong, I love the Necromorphs and the Tyranids and they are a galactic sized threat, but The Flood can only grow more intelligent by consuming. If all three factions fought, the Tyranid Hive Fleets would be assaulting brother moons while the Gravemind can tactically move its flood fleets and armies around. However, I am curious to see how a flood infection form crawling into a Necromorph would work…

[@msmith1890]

"One single Flood spore can destroy a species!" The Ship Master

[@mcknight-e5c]

If aliens exist, its not unlikely at all for something like the flood to exist and thats terrifying.

[@FlutterGuy121]

it's like Bungie looked at Warhammer 40K's orks and tyrannids and made something just as terrifying.

[@jakespacepiratee3740]

uh I think the Flood came out first even if they didnt, the Flood are more easy to kill and look vastly different. All sci-fi does not have descent from 40K. Especially mine.

[@SuperGman117]

@@jakespacepiratee3740 Flood definitely didn't come first, lmao. They might not be based on anything from 40K (or they might, who knows?) but they definitely didn't come first. Warhammer started out in the 80s my dude.

[@Name-tf4qp]

@@jakespacepiratee3740 the flood is way worse than tyranids, their speed makes nids look like disabled grandmas. It can take hundreds of years for a hive fleet to go anywhere. The flood move as fast as local tech allows.

[@jakespacepiratee3740]

@@SuperGman117 Yeah but they look nothing like Tyranids so they arent inspired. Thats all I meant to say. If anything, the Tyranids really do seem to be inspired by the Xenomorphs...

[@jakespacepiratee3740]

@@Name-tf4qp You cant say that.

[@MaxYoung-Maxinfet]

I am amazed just how much footage from this I have not seen before. I really didn't think we knew this much about the flood either, great video.

[@marrvynswillames4975]

some are from the terminals

[@ender_slayer3]

Silence fills the empty grave now that I have gone, but my mind is not at rest for questions linger on.

[@davidvangerner7241]

Imagine if the flood invaded the star wars galaxy during the clone wars

[@Enkidu-4U]

A little bit off topic but I've been hoping MS and 343 would give us a full game surrounding the flood. This world is so rich with stories to tell. It could even be more survival horror as far as game play goes. Maybe Chief has to go to a planet (Or Ring) where the flood has taken over. He needs to retrieve something, or stop something from happening. It could be multiple planets/rings. Imagine something like that in today's graphics? I wouldn't even care if they chose to go with 3rd person either. I remember going thru Halo CE for the first time and it completely changed the game for me once the flood was introduced. Why Chief had to stop them from getting off the ring. Oh well, one can dream. It will never happen but sure is fun to think about.

[@theonlylauri]

Flood was inspired by the Vang trilogy of Christopher Rowley. They can be all read independently, and the second one, The Military Form, is particularly good. It does become a bit of a tragicomedy towards the end. While the infected human colony is deeply corrupt and incompetent, not all is right within the camp of Flood-like invaders either. In the end I almost pitied the poor Military Form.

[@xkumanekox]

Trust me, you will never forget your first encounter with the Flood in CE...

[@Name-tf4qp]

“ A single spore can destroy an entire world…”- The Arbiter

[@seekingabsolution1907]

I think it was the ship master who said that.

[@steadyjumper3547]

it was shipmaster, that’s why right after that line he says if it weren’t for the arbiters council I would have glasses your entire world.

[@CommanderM117]

@@seekingabsolution1907 yup "One single Flood spore can destroy a species. Were it not for the Arbiter's counsel, I would have glassed your entire planet!"- Rtas 'Vadum Ship Master

[@miickydeath12]

entire species*****

[@Noplayster13]

The Flood is a 40K level race loose in a realistic universe.

[@incenius5008]

"one that can only exist through the extermination of others" To be fair we also need food to live. We farm other lifeforms for the express purpose of absorbing their nutrients, you would think that at a certain point a gravemind would become intelligent enough to start farming their own. From the perspective of a flood swarm being an extension of an individual entity, they really arnt that different from one of us.

[@rare_kumiko]

Some day I'll play HALO games. The story sounded pretty cool.

[@kenguyii9108]

I hope to fight the Flood again in Halo Infinite! 😃

[@RaytheonThunder]

Would be great to see Halo's Ancient Humanity faction being covered next.

[@Shinzon23]

See, the Flood don't seem terrifying when you fight them in the games, but when you stop and truly think about them, how they work, how they spread, how they are... They are a terror on the level of Lovecraftian Elder Gods, and surpass them in many ways, as the Elder Ones don't need You, are not Aware of you except in the briefest of flickers of thoughts, and are so far beyond Us that Their sheer presence warps reality itself, and shreds minds, but for all that, They don't pay attention to things in our universe at a level that We can perceive and interact with except in ways that shatter the Mind of all who witness Them... But the Flood? The Flood see you... they know you...they plot against You... And they will consume you.

[@neilcrombie4100]

"you can't have us.... we already do"

[@alexernst9448]

You guys should do a video on the Infested from Warframe. The only thing scarier than a space zombie is a space zombie that can infect robots.

[@emeraldtheprotogen523]

The flood is able to manipulate AI with the logic plague

[@alexernst9448]

@@emeraldtheprotogen523 Yeah but making a computer go nuts isn't as scary as infecting a Sentinel, a Guardian, or even an entire Halo ring and then molding the metal like flesh.

[@Key_Mind]

@@alexernst9448 It's essentially the same thing. The Flood were able to turn Forerunner Contender-Class AI against their creators. The most advanced AI in the entire galaxy could not prevent infection by the FLood.

[@bobafett006]

My absolute favorite I love the flooooood!!! 😈☠️🔥