Well, Iris taught us that the Flood are extragalactic in origin, so I don't think they have a home world in this galaxy. Either way, the Halo Installations weren't even created until near the end if I'm correct. They were the weapons of last resort. The shield worlds and the Ark seemed to have also been slapped together somewhere near the end. And that was all 100,000 years ago. And as DHalo pointed out, the Gravemind from Delta Halo is the same exact one from that original conflict and firing of the Array 100,000 years ago.alstrong wrote:Yeah, it was the first thing floating about in my head after figuring out the years, but there is no reason to correlate the 286 years with the present (2553). Now instead, consider the 300 year war with the Flood (mentioned in the terminals) and this 286 years figure seems to make a bit more sense (to me).
I haven't quite followed all the available information, but could it be possible that Delta Halo was close to the world the Flood were initially discovered? Let's say...soon after the war started, the Forerunner would have taken the samples to Delta, but being an entirely new organism, they didn't know how to contain it properly. But by the time the crap hit the fan, the Forerunner were too busy to deal with it, hence the lack of a response to requests for assistance.
On the flip side, the lack of response might be due to these events taking place post-firing of the Halo Array Network, and the 286 years just happens to be the last time the *something* made a report/request for assistance before the new Gravemind took over things.
Edit: And Strife, your post is fine.