Many of us have played Halo at one point or another, and I've always wondered how or where the Flood came from. Now, I can tell you all (for those who care) where they came from. Prepare for horror!
I typed this all out, so don't hate me if there are spelling errors. Just enjoy if you care enough to read it all.
"The Flood first arrived from one of the Magellanic clouds of stars that drift just outside the reaches of our galaxy. Its precise origin was unknown. Its first effects upon human systems in the far reaches of our arm of the galaxy were subtle, even benign – so it seemed.
Humans suspected it was conveyed on ancient starships, clumsy in design but completely automated. The ships had neither passengers nor crew, and carried little of interest but uniformed kind of cargo – millions of glassy cylinders containing a fine, desiccated powder.
Humans found wreckage of the ships on uninhabited and inhabited worlds alike. The cylinders were carefully examined, using the most stringent cautions, and their powdery contents were analyzed and found to be short-chain molecules, relatively simple and apparently inert – organic, yet neither alive nor capable of life.
Early experiments demonstrated the potential for psychotropic effects in some lower animals, but not in humans or San’Shyuum. The primary animals effected by the powder were, as it turned out, popular pets in human societies: the Pheru, lively and gentle creatures first found on Faun Hakkor. Very small quantities of the powder induced changes in the Pheru that improved their domestic behavior, made them more affectionate, not so much docile as cleverly charismatic. Soon enough, on an emerging black market, outside the control of human governments, Pheru treated with these rare powders commanded a very high price. San’Shyuum at this point also adopted Pheru as pets.
For centuries, dozens of human and San’Shyuum worlds bred and powdered these animals – without ill consequences. No researched suspected that long-term effects of the powder, which attached itself to key points in the genes of Pheru and began to change them … while at the same time improving their behaviors.
What would soon become the Flood first manifested itself as a peculiar growth found on roughly a third of all Pheru treated with the powder. A kind of loose, soft fur grew between the shoulders of the pets. It was regarded by breeders as a natural mutation, even a pleasant variation.
The sensuous quality of the fur particularly impressed the San’Shyuum, who crossbred these specimens.
Other Pheru were soon found grazing on these companions, consuming their fur – and on occasion even consuming the animals themselves. Pheru were naturally herbivores.
This seemed to activate some sort of biological timer, a signal for expansion. Within a very short time, the Pheru were producing far less attractive growths. Flexible striped rods sprouted from their heads, which in turn were also consumed by fellow Pheru – causing abortions and unnatural births.
There was no cure. But this was only the surface of the growing infestation.
The Pheru were soon past recovery. Humans and San’Shyuum dispatched their pets with regret – and puzzlement, for these first stages were beyond their biological understanding. Most researchers believed the Pheru had simply become overbed, overspecialized. A few were returned to their native habitat on Faun Hakkor.
Then – humans began to manifest the growths. Some humans, it seemed, fancied Pheru as food. These humans became vectors. Whatever they touched was also infected, and in time, what they discarded – limbs, tissue – could also spread infection.
Thus began the Flood.
The Plague soon spread from human to San’Shyuum, human to human, but rarely from San’Shyuum to human – altering their behaviors without yet changing their outward appearance. The infested humans combined their resources to force other humans to become infected – usually by cannibalism of a sacrificial individual, included to grow to prodigious size before being consumed while alive.
By this time, dozens of worlds were fully infested and beyond saving.
Humans and other animal species began to reshape themselves into other varied and vicious forms equipped to maim and kill – and consume, absorb, transform.
The Infected worlds and even entire system were quarantined. Many of the infested escaped, however, and spread the plague to hundreds of worlds in fifteen systems.
Humans were the first to recognize the danger.
And this was where the ancient captive in the Precursor prison came into the story. Humans discovered how to communicate with the captive – but only for a few seconds or minutes at a time. The earliest researchers tried to use it as a kind of oracle, asking the questions to vast and difficult questions of physics and even morality – all of which drew out confused or useless responses.
But finally a set of questions were prepared and asked.
They asked about the Flood.
And what these humans received as answers traumatized them so thoroughly that many committed suicide rather than continue to live with their knowledge.
In time, as a kind of defense, access to the captive was reduced, then cut off completely. The human timelock was added. Communication ceased.
Most humans came to believe that the captive was an ancient aberration and had been imprisoned by the Precursors for just cause, and that its prognostications, if they were such, were nonsensical, even mad.
Humans at the height of the Flood’s ravages were pushed to an unexcelled brilliance.
They found a cure.
Sacrifice yet again. Fully a third of the human species must be themselves altered, placed in the pathway of the Flood infestation, and fight fire with fire by infective the Flood itself with a destructive set of programmed genes.
The Flood had no defense; most of it died off. A few of the ships carrying the last of the Flood escaped and left the galaxy once again, destination unknown."
I hope you enjoyed it. I didn't know where to put it. So if it has to be moved, feel free.
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