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A Monument to All of Our Sins

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 4:44 am
by Kiloh Ekim
I? I am a Monument to All Your Sins
Everyone is familiar with this statement from Gravemind from halo 2. There has been much debate and I think I finally found out what it means. The basis of this theory is that everything in the halo universe, in some way, will follow the Noah's Ark story. This will follow the pre-firing events of the Forerunners and (hopefully) not contradict with anything.

Noah's Ark:

1. God sees that all of man (except Noah) is sinning.
2. The sin is so bad that he decided to wipe out all life and tells Noah to make an Ark to survive.
3. Noah does and collects two of every animal and loads himself and his family on the Ark.
4. A flood comes and for forty days and forty nights it rains.
5. He leaves the Ark when the flood had dropped enough.
6. The flood eventually dries up.


Every part of this refers to the pre-first-firing in the halo universe. Let me explain.

The forerunners were the first and most technologically advance race in the universe. They built massive structures in their own majesty (first sin: self-worshiping.) They had military dominance and effectively, a utopia. But they were not happy (second sin: greed) and tried to find a way to reverse the only burden in their lives: Death.

Forerunners = Man. There may be even more behind this (below.)

The fact is that no matter who you are, you will die, and they tried to find a way to change that. They tried to not die; to gain eternal life (third sin and most damning: they tried to make their own eternal life.) One of the parts of the experiments created the flood and it rapidly spun out of control annihilating the first planet in days. This was no accident. This was God (see below).

Flood = Sin The flood was the literal creation of the sin. A Monument of all of our sins. The reference to it being 'our' sins below.

Before long the flood had collapsed the forerunner empire and a single engineer not working on the Flood project was chosen to build an escape plan. This was the halo array and the Ark. A Noah figure is the first reclaimer as he activated the rings the first time. Now his name may be different, but he will have been the architect of the Grand design. Regardless, thanks to AR's post and 343GS we know there were survivors that were forerunner in origin.

Noah finds himself on the Ark, alone, and surrounded by technology. Knowing that he will be the last of his race he works with the machines to create something that will clone him. The result was the first humans. Noah's family. They couldn't operate a ship to escape Earth so Noah lived out the rest of his days on Earth quietly.

Now the point of this post? There was a single piece of the puzzle that was left out. God. Now there's two things that can be done here.
1. A real god. Or an invisible one, at least. Like a very destructive Karma.
2. The last element of the halo series. A yet untold force that will reveal itself in Halo 3 that has been running the show the whole time.

This is the theory that I'm working with until Halo 3. Everything points to it, in my opinion. If you're noticing any inconsistencies or just want object, feel free to.

Re: A Monument to All of Our Sins

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:15 am
by ATF Goose
Nice post! Maybe this God chose John to be the next Noah/Reclaimer way ahead of time, and would kinda explain why John has always been so "Lucky" as stated in the books.

Re: A Monument to All of Our Sins

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:31 am
by shamanistcrage
i think john would more represent "Jesus" the son of God. who washed away all our sins "flood"...
if you buy into religion.

Re: A Monument to All of Our Sins

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:31 am
by shamanistcrage
and, Great post, by the way.

Re: A Monument to All of Our Sins

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:18 pm
by System Failure
Nice post! Maybe this God chose John to be the next Noah/Reclaimer way ahead of time, and would kinda explain why John has always been so "Lucky" as stated in the books
So true. John survived many operations that he should've died in. But if we are translating the story in terms of the Bible, where do the other Spartans fit in, Angels or Disciples? I had been thinking about that since

spoiler

Kurt blew himself up on Onyx, and was visited by Images of all the dead Spartan II's and III's. Maybe if Halo has religious connections those apparitions were not hallucinations, but Angles coming back to help Kurt save Blue Team.

Also like i said in another post this "God" could be an overruling A.I. of the entire Forerunner system, and therefore responsible for the upkeep of the entire galaxy. This would allow it to feel the sorrow God felt after he killed everything with the flood, because the Forerunner would likly give emotion to an A.I. with so much power.

Re: A Monument to All of Our Sins

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:45 pm
by Ross
Very nice. All fits nicly together.

Re: A Monument to All of Our Sins

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 3:26 pm
by Dalthanas
Nicely done indeed. I don't know if we need to assume cloning though, it's also possible that our Noah brought other Forerunners with him, as cloning wouldn't provide ANY gene pool by which to procreate. Just as he brought animals, he could have brought people and Genesis refers to him bringing his sons.
System Failure wrote:
Also like i said in another post this "God" could be an overruling A.I. of the entire Forerunner system, and therefore responsible for the upkeep of the entire galaxy. This would allow it to feel the sorrow God felt after he killed everything with the flood, because the Forerunner would likly give emotion to an A.I. with so much power.
I would agree that this story line would place god as something of this sort. Let's not forget that after creation, God placed Adam (and subsequently Eve) in the Garden of Eden, a virtual utopia (see the connection to the first post), implying that this AI or whatever ushered in this golden age. And in the old testament God is a very different God then new testament and modern conception of pure benevolence, forgiveness, and love. He was as easily often angered and vengeful in the old testament. I don't want to get into a Biblical exegesis, so in short, I agree. Any sort of god-like AI or overmind would have been equipped with the full gambit of emotion, and the parallels between Genesis and this story are great.

Re: A Monument to All of Our Sins

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 6:36 pm
by 3zz
Im very sure there is no 'Halo' god.

Your theory, however, is mostly right. The story is very much, and also very obviously, based on Naoh's story. However equally obvious, Bungie does not have to follow the story 1 on 1, so they dont have to have that 'Halo-god' you talk about, and frankly Im convinced there is no 'Halo-god' running things and if there is it would ruin the entire story for me.

The only thing behind Graveminds words is what you said, the Flood is the physical embodyment of the Forerunners sins (whatever they might have been), because aparently they created the Flood. Though Im not completely at peace with that 'created the Flood' theory it does seem the most likely at this point.

Re: A Monument to All of Our Sins

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:10 pm
by Dalthanas
3zz wrote:Im very sure there is no 'Halo' god.

Your theory, however, is mostly right. The story is very much, and also very obviously, based on Naoh's story. However equally obvious, Bungie does not have to follow the story 1 on 1, so they dont have to have that 'Halo-god' you talk about, and frankly Im convinced there is no 'Halo-god' running things and if there is it would ruin the entire story for me.
I don't think anyone said there was a Halo God, and I certainly didn't. Considering that Halo is supposed to take place in our timeline, just in the future, what I was alluding to was that the Biblical stories are a retelling of what actually happened after the Halo fired 100,000 years ago. Given that human-kind as we know it was in its infancy both during the Bible stories and after emerging from the Cradle, it would be a primitive interpretation. It's not there is a halo god, its that the AI, or whatever, is what was called God. This is how religions are created (sorry to those who are religious) from ancient Jewish, through Greek and Christian. Stories are created to explain the unexplainable. This explains the story of the Ark for sure, and as I speculated, perhaps Eden etc. for the forerunners, and it was simply retold in a manner in which the people of the time could understand.

Re: A Monument to All of Our Sins

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:12 pm
by Swift
3zz wrote:Im very sure there is no 'Halo' god.

Your theory, however, is mostly right. The story is very much, and also very obviously, based on Naoh's story. However equally obvious, Bungie does not have to follow the story 1 on 1, so they dont have to have that 'Halo-god' you talk about, and frankly Im convinced there is no 'Halo-god' running things and if there is it would ruin the entire story for me.

The only thing behind Graveminds words is what you said, the Flood is the physical embodyment of the Forerunners sins (whatever they might have been), because aparently they created the Flood. Though Im not completely at peace with that 'created the Flood' theory it does seem the most likely at this point.
I'd have to say that I'm in favor of the 'created the flood' theory. I just finished reading FoR, The Flood, and FS (read all three in three days so it's still fairly fresh in my mind), and throughout the process it seemed to stand out more and more as i progressed. Unfortunatly it never accured to me to take down quotes but I may still be able to formulate a reasonable argument.
I think that the Forerunner created the Flood as a weapon, but not in the usual sense. They had a weapon of mass proportions at thier disposal (Halo's), but if you were trying to fight a single race then you wouldnt want to eliminate ALL races in an attempt to get that one. The Flood could be sent to a planet and within a short period of time that planet would be void of life, and then the flood on the planet could be disposed of by destruction/glassing. Now the question is, Why send the Flood in first, when you could jump right to the destruction?
Add what we know about Gravemind to this and that question can be answered. Knowledge. If the Gravemind has the combined knowledge of all infected forms, then infecting a planet first would allow you access to EVERYTHING that ANY of the inhabitants would know, thus increasing exponentially what was at the forerunners disposal, and also provides an explanation as to how they were so advanced.
That may seem somewhat random, but there was one quote that lead me to that.
Gravemind wrote:"Silence fills the empty grave now that I have gone,
But my mind is not at rest, for questions linger on.
Now I will ask and you will answer."
The bolded part is what I was focusing on...
That statement is mostly taken as "Tell me what i want to know", but the Now is what stood out to me. "Now I will ask" seems to indicate that previously someone/thing was doing the asking and he was answering them (them being the forerunner), but of course the gravemind would have eventually realised that he didn't need the forerunner, and turned on them thus resulting in a firing of the halo's prior to what was expected.
Also having created the virus, they would have to infect one of thier own, meaing gravemind was formerly forerunner, hence "I am a monument to all our sins". He is saying that of all the he was the cause of the death and destruction of all those people/planets and he is all that remains of thier terrible actions...

-EDIT-
343 Guilty Spark wrote:The installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood. Their survival as a race was dependent upon it. I am grateful to see that some of them survived to reproduce.
Above statement also aligns itself nicely with this theory, as the survival of the forerunner was dependent on thier new "weapon" for offence and for further advancing thier race