Introduction[]
The Forerunners were a highly advanced, ancient species whose empire at its height encompassed three million fertile worlds in the Milky Way approximately 150,000 to 100,000 years ago. The Forerunners were the creators and builders of many significant installations, including the Halo Arrays, the Ark, and the Shield Worlds, as well as numerous lesser artifacts later found on many worlds.
Biology[]
The Forerunners are quite similar to modern-Humans, but also share traits with the San'Shyuum as well. The differences from either of these species is that Forerunners have a pale complexion and black sclera.
Due to Forerunner customs they wear armor or combat skins at all times, it is difficult to determine other natural traits as well. A common trait of these seems to be that it makes Forerunners hover in a standing position.
Forerunner mutation to rates, also affect the characteristics of a Forerunner; these traits apparently range from increased height to an additional thumb on each hand.
There are five known rates: the Lifeworkers, the Warrior-Servants, the Builders, the Miners, and the Juridicals. Manipulars are juvenile Forerunners not yet mutated into a rate. Theoreticals were a rate of scientists that were dissolved after the Human-Forerunner war. Counting both the Manipulars and Theoreticals, there are a total of seven rates.
Culture[]
Mantle of Responsibility[]
The Mantle of Responsibility was a Forerunner philosophy and one of the few aspects of its culture that has survived to the modern era. While no precise definition of it exists, it is heavily implied that it was the source of both the Forerunners' "authority" and their apparent duty to preserve the galaxy's biological diversity. Bridging the social strata between an interstellar Marshall Plan and a religious, but benevolent, stewardship, the Forerunners took responsibility for the protection and cultivation of the species and planetary systems within their domain.
Forerunner mythology held that the Mantle was passed down to them by an even earlier and more advanced race, the Precursors; to what extent this was true, or even whether or not it was a common belief, remains unknown. Regardless of its origin, the Forerunners seem to have handed their Mantle down to Humanity. What actually happened was that the Forerunners and Primus Humans reached Tier II technology, and the Precursors had intended that the Humans take on the role of inheriting the Mantle and for the Forerunners to be eliminated. When said news got to Forerunners they rose and killed all the Precursors and therefore took on the role of holding the Mantle.
Some Forerunners doubted the purpose and validity of the Mantle, dismissing it as superstition and fairy tales. The Librarian, in particular, had such doubts, and even went so far as to hold it responsible for the downfall of the Forerunners at the hands of the Reapers. The then-rampant AI Mendicant Bias believed that the Forerunners used the Mantle to obstruct any change, even that which might eventually be beneficial.
The governance of the Forerunner Ecumene was entirely dictated by the Mantle, as were the religious beliefs of individual Forerunners. However, inspiring peace throughout their domain by minimizing their military capacity and disarming their weapons cache proved to be a costly approach for the Forerunners when the new alien threat emerged.
Rather than allowing every species to rise on their own merits, the Forerunners, following their Mantle, gave them no need to do so, serving as protectors against any threats that might have forced technological or cultural progression. An unforeseen side-effect was that only the Forerunners were able to hold their own against the Reapers (at least once they rearmed), while their charges were unable to defend themselves; the Forerunners had unintentionally left the galaxy vulnerable to Flood infection.
Some of the ideals of following the Mantle, such as it requiring a strict vegetarian diet as it "forbade the eating of the flesh of unfortunates." Suicide goes against the greatest and most solemn instructions of the Mantle.
Technology[]
During the Forerunner Golden Age after the Forerunner-precursor war, the Forerunners discovered instantaneous and safe slipspace travel, allowing them to cross the galaxy in a few hours. They then made many superstructures, including artificial planets called shield worlds, some as colossal as 006 which was 2AU (light-years) in diameter, while in reality it was only 23cm in diameter, proving that they could actually bend the laws of physics at will if necessary, they could also control other dimensions such as dealispace.
They also created a device called "the composer" that digitized organic life forms in just a few seconds into AI, capable of manifesting bodies made of hard light at will. (Forerunner's hard light is not an atomic substance, it simply gathers a large amount of photons before holding them in place to simulate a state of matter). They also discovered Halo energy, which destroys nerve tissue or anything related to the Neural Physics of the Precursors.
The Forerunners can build ships in seconds to the point where they would have billions of new warships in a year due to their advanced and efficient industrial power. The Forerunners also use a lot of AI and robots for everything, be it peace or war. But in addition to robots, the Forerunners also have trillions of organic soldiers and technology to genetically modify and clone more organics if necessary. Forerunners also use the compositor if they need to quickly create an army of synthetic soldiers that cannot be destroyed by conventional weapons and are made of light, and can appear out of nowhere at any time.
Forerunner ships can destroy entire solar systems if they choose, collapsing their star (it is unknown how they do it), in addition to being able to survive black holes.
They also have unique weapons, such as directed energy weapons that can pierce the planet's crust, soldiers that control millions of drones, significant use of antimatter weapons, space hax such as immobilizing enemy ships and their crews or destroying them from the inside, ignoring them for good. full protection capacity, etc...
The forerunners also have the "Vacuum Energy Towers" that use the energy of nascent universes to power all their mega-structures (infinite energy basically).
Infantry[]
• Forerunners: servant-warriors
Generally mutated to be the best of warriors, averaging 11 feet tall, numbers in the trillions, each of these warriors has thousands to millions of years of experience due to geas implants, fragments of souls that are they use for the purpose of gaining experience, also they see the objective reality through the battle mode that divides the streams of time into various fragments within their mind, being able to see time in different streams is much higher than the reaction time of any scale
their mental capacity was immense even more than that of an AI, they could control 1 million combat ships in the battlefields simultaneously with just their mind, not only that, but they could fight for years without any external support and not sleep for a while. second in his life.
The warrior servants were ruthless in war and were known for their trademark lethality, they were no less than demigods in battle.
They only died in accidents, fights or by orders to go into exile. Otherwise, death was rejected by the forerunners due to their advanced combat skins that could regenerate them on a molecular level and "cut continents", the armor integrated with the mind of the wearer to the point that, in cases of psychologically experienced harmful, the armor could selectively purge specific memories. In the event of extreme mental damage, the armor could "reset" the owner's brain to a stable state, giving them complete immunity to any sort of mind control shenanigans if the AI could sense it, plus their combat skin could become virtually invulnerable to damage. enemy attacks after taking a few hits and learning the attacks, making them practically immune to antimatter weapons and also if a part of the suit broke it could regenerate almost instantly due to those floating things they used for antigravity.
they possessed ridiculous strength when injured, they could move at an imperceptible speed, they could remove a knife directly from their skull easily, they could float, etc...
They were more muscular and robust looking than any other forerunner caste, they had immense psychological powers, even without armor, they were more resistant to mental torture than any other species.
Weaponry[]
Forerunner constructs and sentries use a broad variety of weapons, typically high-powered energy beams.
Art and Architecture[]
Forerunner architecture is noted mainly for being large-scale and geometric in style, with a semi-triangular theme being the most commonly observed design. The Forerunners were highly skilled at creating natural-looking habitats, such as those of the Halo rings, which tend to be very elaborate, with numerous extrapolations of the basic design of a construct appearing to be purely decorative.
In addition, the structures were engineered to compliment the natural landscape, as opposed to the modern idea of replacing it. That said, their distinctive beauty are not restricted to Halo Array network. The Aztec-esque stones of Cote D'Azur, the arches and weathered inscriptions of Sigma Octanus IV, the intricate caverns and three-kilometer holographic dome beneath Reach's surface, the ancient stepping-stones of the Unggoy's homeworld, and the Onyx, all display the Forerunner's innovative architectures.
Most Forerunner architecture is constructed with a special type of metal that resists deterioration, bullets, plasma bolts and fire, as made evident by Forerunner structures standing in pristine condition 100,000-150,500 years after they were built.
Other structures are constructed out of traditional materials, such as chalcedonic quartz, which does not preserve nearly so well. These structures employ complex geometric shapes that appear to operate in dimensions higher than modern understanding can comprehend. The Forerunners also decorated the interiors of their structures with a complex web of engraved straight lines and applied decorative touches and designs to nearly everything that they built, from structures to weapons.
Forerunner Astro-Engineering[]
While the Forerunners' architectural and technological prowess is legendary among contemporary civilization, their masterpieces also extended to the fields of stellar engineering. At least three Forerunner sites, the Onyx, the Ark, and Apex, made use of suns where none should exist.
The Ark is confirmed to be artificial, due to its unnatural "flower head" shape. It is likewise unknown if these are the only stellar engineering achievements the Forerunners made. However, it is clear that manipulation of slipstream space allowed the Forerunners to transport and position these structures throughout the galaxy.
History[]
Early Evolution[]
The Forerunners first emerged on the planet of Ghibalb, under the guidance of the ancient Precursors, who they considered to be their creators. Described as a paradise, this planet became desolate and scoured with radiation after the Forerunners' early experiments in stellar engineering ended in disaster, resulting in a series of novas in the Orion Complex.
Precursor-Forerunner War[]
Eventually, the Forerunners rose up against their creators, the Precursors, as revenge for handing the Mantle of Responsibility to Humanity, specifically the Primus Humans. The reasons for this are unknown but it has been theorized that the Primus Humans policy of non-interference unless neccessary in contrast to the Forerunner's policy of intervening to push civilization to follow the path of peace and free of conflict was the reason the Precursors chose the former.
It is known that early Forerunners drove the Precursors out of the galaxy and followed them to Path Kethona where they utterly destroy the remaining Precursors, save for a few. Almost all Precursor technology and structures have been lost due to this act, due to the neural properties of their constructions rapidly dissolved without the Precursors presence and while a few survived the neural termination effects of the Halo Array wiped out all traces of the civilization.
Post-Precursor Era[]
The fact that the Halos were scattered around the galaxy also hints at the possibility that the Forerunner Empire covered most, if not all, of the Milky Way. In the absence of the Precursors, their civilization became entirely based around the Mantle of Responsibility, a belief that it was their role to protect all life in the galaxy.
The Forerunners themselves were a race almost entirely without conflict, and at some point in their history had reached a point of disarmament, believing they no longer needed weapons in their rule of the galaxy, which ultimately weakened them when the Reapers attacked. Some have suggested that this event could have been influenced by the Reapers themselves, in response to the fact that if the Forerunners had at least armed their vessels with even basic weaponry, they could have possibly won in direct conflict with the Reapers.
Primus Human Empire[]
By approximately 150,000 BCE, those Lanteans who had fled the Alliance-Reaper War, had achieved a considerable level of technological sophistication, achieving interstellar travel and colonizing planets along the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, in direct relation to their closest neighbors, the Forerunners.
After encountering the San 'Shyuum, Humanity formed an alliance, based on the planet Charum Hakkor. At this point, Humanity's technological advancement rivaled that of the Forerunners, with the Humans using Lantean and surviving Asgard artifacts to support their structures and installations. Although the Primus Humans were considered a far younger race by the Forerunners, they had always held Forerunner interference with contempt. Looking to escape from Forerunner control, Humanity expanded throughout the Orion arm, and eventually began building an impressive empire consisting of unknown amount of worlds.
Before their downfall, Humanity had made great advances in military and science and technology, rivaling those of the Forerunners. Even the highly advance Forerunners had little defense against the weapons created by the Humans and San'Shyuum. By collecting and reverse-engineering Precursor technology at Charum Hakkor, one of the largest collections in the galaxy, Humanity's rapid technological achievements made willing challenges towards Forerunner policies. This, coupled with their belief that they - not the Forerunners - were the (true) inheritors of the Mantle from the Precursors, made them ideological enemies, and heretics from a Forerunner perspective.
Reaper Manipulations[]
This civilization encountered evidence of the Reapers return in approximately 110,000 BCE and, after discovering the machine's true nature, began to rapidly prepare for the coming conflict. However indoctinated Humans used by the Reaper Pontent ignited a civil war and after losing many planets, Humanity desperately invaded a minor sector of the Forerunners' domain to suppliment the lose of their major agricultural worlds. After forty-thousand years of expansion, the collective human genus waged war with the biologically-similar Forerunner species.
Eventually, they developed a cure against Indoctrination, winning the Human Civil War. Because Pontent had never encountered a race that could develop a cure to Indoctrination, it had to destroy the First Human Empire at all cost. In order to do this it covertly funded fringe purist groups to take control of the empire and spark a war with the Forerunner Empire.
Forerunner-Primus Human War[]
Around 100,000 BCE, the Primus Human Empire suddenly invaded un-aligned territories near Forerunner space and annihilated 50 defenseless systems in which Forerunners had resettled other species. After displacing the indigenous populations of those systems, Humanity replaced them with Human colonies to strengthen their hold over these new territories.
Although Humanity was successful in its early conquest of the alien worlds which the Forerunners resettled, they were forced to deploy the majority of their military against the Reaper indoctrinated elements of their people. By the time the rebels had been defeated, the Human military had been exhausted. Even the capital of Charum Hakkor had been cut off from the rest of the empire by Forerunner naval fleets blockading the routes to the system. On Charum Hakkor, the Primus Human had incorporated Precursor technology and constructed formidable fortifications capable of standing out against even the strongest fleets.
Despite having the combined Forerunner military at their disposal, it took the Forerunners great efforts to defeat the Human resistance and capture the capital. Although cut-off and unable to receive reinforcements from the San'Shyuum, the Humans held off continuous attacks for fifty years. When the planet finally fell, and significant number of Humans and San'Shyuum committed suicide rather than being taken prisoner. Although Humanity was completely and utterly defeated, the tragedies of the war convinced the Forerunners to oppose and forestall the construction of the Halo Array seeing it would violate the Mantle as the destruction of Humanity proved similarly, a task that he succeeded for thousands of years.
Collapse[]
The Primus Humans defeat affirmed Forerunner hegemony over the entire galaxy, as one of the only few powers capable of competing against them was utterly defeated. However, the destruction of the Primus Human Empire set the stage for the return of the Reapers and the disastrous Forerunner-Repear War, as the Forerunners proved totally inadequate to deal with the machines (due to their disarmament). The Forerunners later regretted the complete destruction of the Primus Humans, since, earlier, they were unaware the Reapers were the reason for Humanity's aggression during the Human Civil War.
The San'Shyuum homeworld was placed under quarantine, with a Forerunner military fortress orbiting the planet. When the Forerunners attempted to index the San'Shyuum during the early stages of the Forerunner-Reaper War, the San'Shyuum mistook their intentions and rose in revolt against the Forerunners. The military elements of the Forerunners took this opportunity to test Halo's effects on living beings, on the San'Shyuum homeworld; it surpassed all expectations. This genocidal act led to the near extinction of the San'Shyuum species.
As punishment for the war, Humanity was reduced to a pre-technological state and were exiled to the world Erde-Tyrene, where they were overseen by the Forerunner known only as the Librarian. However, the Forerunner victory proved disastrous for the galaxy, as the Humans destroyed all their research data and physical evidence concerning the Reapers, including a cure to stop the Indoctrination. Many speculated it was Humanity's final act of revenge to leave the Forerunners unprepared to face the incoming threat that led to the firing of the Halo array.
As of the modern era, most artifacts and records of this former civilization had been lost to time. Even during the carefully observations by the Protheans found no trace of the ancient Primus Human Empire beyond a few footnotes in salvaged Forerunner databases. However, ruins on the planet Heian appear to show hallmarks of Human design, suggesting that the planet was inhabited by ancient, space-faring Humans.
Empire[]
The Ecumene is the formal name of the galaxy-spanning Forerunner empire which existed over 100,000-years ago and consisted of three million or more planets. The political center of this empire was known as the Capital, a massive structure containing multiple cities.
Territory[]
- Installation 00
- Installation 01
- Installation 02
- Installation 03
- Installation 04
- Installation 05
- Installation 06
- Installation 07
- Maginot line
- Onyx
- Shield World
- Micro Dyson Sphere
- Portal Artifact
- Threshold
- Relic
- Apex
- Flood Research Facilities
- Reach
- Arcadia
- Requiem
- The Line
- Capital
- CE-10-2165-d
- Edom
- Erde-Tyrene
- Ghibalb
- G 617 g
- LP 656-38 e