Flood (Halo)

The Flood are an ancient parasitic species that feature in Halo.

History

The Flood were an ancient race of vicious extra-galactic parasites that were able to infect other sentient hosts and convert them into more of their kind. In the last days of the Forerunners it was believed by a number of their kind that the Flood was actually the last remnants of the Precursors.

Attempts were made by the Forerunners at finding an immunity to Flood infection. One of these was the use of the Composer though this proved to be a failure. However, the Didact decided to use it to transform his Prometheans into energy constructs that served him as soldiers in wiping out the Flood. Thus, they lost their physical forms and became mindless constructs where they followed their leaders commands which they did so willingly. The Promethean Knights were deployed in the conflict against the Flood where they proved to be effective. However, the parasite had spread too far and had greater numbers with the Didact deciding to forcibly transform humans into Prometheans for the war.

After every possible measure was exhausted, the Forerunners decided that the only way to truly defeat the Flood was to starve it of life that it consumed. Thus, they decided to wipe out the galaxy of life with the Halo Arrays and repopulate it with samples that they had safely stored.

Despite the destruction of the parasite, samples of the Flood were kept in various facilities for study as it was deemed that there were still aspects of the organism that resided outside the galaxy that could bring about its return. It was hoped that through continued study that perhaps an immunity or a cure could be discovered in these facilities.

Thousands of years after the end of the Forerunner-Flood war, the human ship UNSC Spirit of Fire jumped from Arcadia to follow the signal of Professor Anders, who had been captured by the Covenant. They were led to an unknown planet, which happened to be a Forerunner shield world. Containment measures on this planet had failed catastrophically, and the entire surface of the megastructure was choked with Flood biomass. Ground forces were deployed to investigate the presence of unknown hostiles sighted by the ship's radar. After fighting their way through Covenant forces, Sergeant Forge and several Marine squads were attacked by the Flood. After successfully defeating the Flood forces, the UNSC forces created a firebase in the area that Anders' signal appeared to be coming from. The humans eventually tracked the signal to a massive Proto-Gravemind attached to several Flood colonies. The Proto-Gravemind had duplicated Anders' signal, possibly in hopes of infecting the humans and spreading beyond Etran Harborage. It was discovered that killing a Flood colony weakened the Proto-Gravemind and SPARTAN-II Red Team, with help from the firebase, destroyed the Proto-Gravemind. The Flood responded by launching a massive attack on the Spirit of Fire's Alpha, Bravo and Charlie Platoons to avoid them returning to the ship. Despite massive Flood resistance, forces from the Spirit of Fire were able to rescue the platoons before their firebase was overrun by the Flood. With the Proto-Gravemind dead, the smart-AI Serina was able to reacquire Anders' actual signal, which led to an ocean under which a docking port leading to the interior shield world was located. During the Spirit of Fire's descent, the outer surface of the ship was infested by the Flood. With the aid of Sentinels and 'cleansing rings' controlled by the installation's AI, the Spirit of Fire crew were able to cleanse the ship and proceed into the shield world. Within, the UNSC forces discovered that the Flood had managed to infest the interior of the shield world as well, though not to as massive of a degree as the surface planet itself. While rescuing Anders, Forge had to save her from three pod infectors and ran into some trouble with Flood forces on his following missions, though not to the massive extent they had been seen on the exterior planet. In order to prevent the Covenant from getting their hands on Etran Harborage's fleet of Forerunner Sojourner-class dreadnoughts, a plan was created to use the reactor from the Spirit of Fire's Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine to induce the shield world's artificial star to go supernova. The plan was a success and Etran Harborage was destroyed. The explosion obliterated the Flood on the planet, along with the Covenant forces and the Forerunner fleet.

Although the first firing of the Halo Array starved the Flood that were at large in the Milky Way Galaxy, Flood specimens were kept in stasis within installations around the galaxy, including Installation 04 and various Forerunner research facilities. This would prove to be a grave mistake, as both humanity and the Covenant stumbled upon one of the abandoned Halo rings thousands of years after the firing of the Array. The UNSC AI Cortana, aboard the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, made what was presumed to be a 'blind' jump through Slipspace to evade Covenant pursuers. This led both groups to Installation 04, and in turn, the Flood that were kept there in stasis. After the crash of the Pillar of Autumn on the Halo ring, piloted by Captain Jacob Keyes, the surviving crewmembers dug in for what they believed would be a long and brutal guerrilla campaign against the Covenant forces on the ring. Meanwhile, the pursuing Covenant cruisers, among them the Truth and Reconciliation, amassed their ground forces on the surface, where they soon discovered an underground Forerunner Flood containment facility in the swamps of the ring. Due to the secure nature of the facility, the Covenant came to use it as a fortified base of operations and as a storage area for weapons and ammunition, oblivious to its true nature and purpose. At some point, either through a malfunction in containment equipment or a blunder on the Covenant's part, the captive Flood forms within the facility's stasis chambers were released and attacked the Covenant forces inside. The Covenant had at least a rudimentary knowledge of what the Flood were capable of, and promptly locked the facility down and evacuated all personnel who survived the incident. Keyes and his team were unaware of these events, and proceeded to move deep into the facility, ultimately coming across one of the unopened Flood containment chambers. Believing it was a weapons cache of some sort, the team unlocked the door, and were attacked and assimilated by the Pod infectors inside. Upon being informed of Keyes' disappearance, John-117 was deployed to Captain Keyes' last known location on the drop ship Echo 419, proceeding into the facility, only to find out that most of the Marines he had been assigned to rescue, including the Captain himself, had succumbed to the Flood. These events brought knowledge of the Flood to the UNSC.

When Captain Keyes was infected, the Flood sensed that he held knowledge that would be especially useful to the Flood. Keyes knew the location of Earth, the birthplace and major stronghold of the human race, a planet with tremendous possible assimilation opportunities for the Flood. Instead of becoming a combat form, he was merged with at least four other victims into a massive, engorged proto-Gravemind aboard the Ket-pattern battlecruiser Truth and Reconciliation, a Covenant warship the Flood had taken over. While he was being incorporated into the proto-Gravemind, the Flood intelligence began to dig through his mind, searching his memories for the location of Earth. Captain Keyes successfully withheld information about Earth by constantly accessing information available on his command neural interface such as his name, rank, and serial number, until John-117 arrived. However, his arrival was too late, for Keyes was already dead, completely consumed by the Proto-Gravemind. It was at that time that John-117 was forced to punch a hole into Keyes' skull to obtain the Captain's CNI transponder. The Truth and Reconciliation was a major point of contention between the Covenant Special Operations units and the Flood. The Flood had decimated most of the Covenant crew and garrison on board, leaving only isolated pockets of resistance, mostly small numbers of terrified Unggoy and a few Sangheili aboard the vessel. However, below the Truth and Reconciliation, in a series of rocky canyons, the Covenant were much stronger in force, with large numbers of Sangheili augmented by Unggoy, Kig-yar, and Mgalekgolo, fighting off the Flood. The Covenant Council of Masters in charge of operations on Installation 04, however, were terrified by the Flood presence. Because the Covenant battlecruiser had been damaged in a previous space battle with the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, it had been grounded, awaiting repairs to its underbelly and plasma carrying conduits, for at least two days. After the Flood were discovered to be aboard the battlecruiser, the Covenant military leadership sent a Special Operations strike force to the Truth and Reconciliation to commence immediate emergency repairs, prepare it for lift-off into space and neutralize the Flood. These efforts, however, failed, with the Flood eventually retaking the vessel.

Overview

It was designated in as Latin Inferi redivivus ("the dead reincarnated"). The Flood was a voracious hive-minded parasite that sought to capture, convert and control other sentient hosts in order to perpetuate itself. Infected hosts had their nervous systems subsumed by the parasite who turned their bodies into puppets of its will with their memories and flesh assimilated as well as twisted for further infestation. This parasitic race was considered an anomaly to all known biology with their mode of growth and reproduction making them incompatible with any natural ecosystem. It was an organism that fed on intelligent life and in doing so became ever more intelligent itself. Central to the parasite was a substance known as the Flood Super Cell (FSC) that composed their being with this being an unknown form of neuron-like cell. These cells formed the Flood biomass where they configured into any shape or muscle needed to continue to sustain the biological and organizational growth of the parasite. In the latter stages of Flood development, the super cell spontaneously generated as part of the Flood's attempts to transform the environment into one more conductive to the growth of the Flood. These cells then form spores that can parasitize other organisms whether they were sentient or non-sentient with the hosts having their bio-mass transformed into an incubator for more larger Flood forms. Each infected host was then linked to form a distributed intelligence that allowed for interstellar coordination along with the formation of further more sophisticated consciousness nodes. There was no known inoculation, treatment or cure against infection nor a means to reverse it with the only effective countermeasure being containment along with incineration.

A number of varying forms were adopted by the parasite among its infected hosts with some of these being specialized to accomplish specific goals. Its most basic version was the Infection form that were small organisms with numerous tendrils from its body that swarmed enemies in order to hijack their bodies and nervous system. Once infected, the hosts suffered a rapid transformation where they were converted into another form. For battle, the Flood twisted host bodies to create Combat forms that were used to subdue hosts and secure further targets for infections. After the completion of their ask, the combat forms were transformed into a Carrier form that contained more infection forms within it and thus further extended the parasites ability to grow in number. Following the acquirement of sufficient biomass, the ruling intelligence of he Flood began creating Pure forms. These were formed completely from assimilated nutrients and biomass with these being able to shift between three different configurations that were known as Stalker forms, Tank forms and Ranged forms. A highly specialised combat form was the Juggernauts that were directed by a seething mass of infection forms that were linked together by multiple hosts. The host's minds were harnessed by the creature whereby it analysed enemy activity and adjusted the strategy of local Flood forces. These organisms were said to hold some traits that were normally associated with fully-fledged Key Minds such as the capacity to synchronise nearby parasites along with relaying information between various Flood groupings. The most distinctive feature of these Flood was their enormous size and sheer physical strength allowing them to use their sharp tendril-arms to impale armored vehicles and crush enemies under their large legs.

It was determined that the Flood followed a four stage developmental process:

• Feral stage : the Flood were at its most simplest form where they communicated through pheromone and had an instinctual objective to harvest enough calcium to lead to the creation of a valid Gravemind.
• Coordinated stage : at this point the parasite becomes dangerous as it was now controlled by a Gravemind.
• Interstellar stage : the Flood begins to take control of space-faring technology that they used to consume the local star system and began spreading throughout the galaxy to infect more hosts.
• Intergalactic stage : a theoretical point whereby the parasite made use of all the captured technology to depart to uninfected galaxies in order to further replicate itself.

Upon reaching a certain mass, the Flood formed a construct known as the Compound Mind that controlled the deployment of the parasites. Generally, the Flood had no compunction with sacrificing parts of the whole but if the core of the Mind was threatened then it reacted violently and quickly. Such attacks against it were the only time when it parasite retracted or slowed its growth in an effort to preserve itself. Once infestation was established over an area, the parasite continues to transition from feral aggression to more coordinated conversion efforts leading to the creation of specialised Flood organisms that networked their individual intelligences. These were the Key Minds that acted as coordinators for nearby Flood forces where they harvested the wisdom from host organisms that was used by the parasite to expand, outthink and consume other forms of life. As the parasite grew in numbers then the Key minds combined to create larger and much more intelligent networks. The presence of these organisms was an indicator that most local life and sentient hosts had been consumed by the Flood. These intelligences were capable of extraordinary levels of strategic planning abilities and were a match with Forerunner Metarch-level Ancilla with thm capable of assuming complete control over captured sectors of space and sending converted battle fleets through space. Upon reaching critical mass, the seething form of the intelligent networks gave rise to a Proto-Gravemind that sifted through the memories of the infected victims. The Gravemind was considered the apex of Flood evolution that exerted control over large areas and was able to divide its attention among its various strategies on a galactic scale.

The Flood was capable of surviving and prospering in almost any environment where in the early stages of an outbreak there are environmental conditions that can slow the parasite’s spread—something that factors into the containment protocols of various Forerunner installations which utilize artificial weather and terraforming systems. Mitigating factors were never a guarantee of victory over the parasite as the Flood was capable of adjusting local environments to create the optimal conditions for spreading the Flood Super Cell. Left unchecked and uncontained, blightlands were the result of the parasite’s expansion. Native life in the local area were not the only victims of consumptions as the vitality of the soil and even solar energy all contributed towards transforming lands into nightmarish plague fields featuring towering spore mountains and other vile methods through which the Flood can be spread ever further.

To spread itself, the Flood used large chunks of biomass as dispersal pods that spread the parasite to new locations.

The parasite could survive and grow in almost an environment though it thrived in a small range of habitable planets. Within hives, a controlled environment was made for accelerated growth but over time an entire planet's biosphere could be altered to match these ideal conditions. The first step in this conversion process was the formation of Blightlands that were areas around a hive that was filled with specialised growths that harvested the vitality of the soil. In addition, this organic mass soaked in solar energy and consumed all native life within its vicinity. These areas grew in vitality but ultimately were consumed in order to provide the necessary raw material for the city-sized spore towers along with the other array of Flood organs that bring about the demise of a planet.

A weapon used by the parasite was a logic plague that was a payload of corrupting truths and logic puzzles that induced rampancy in artificial intelligences. It operated by targeting rationality protocols and allowing the Flood's views to hold sway over an artificial intelligence's decision-making process causing the construct to turn on its creators and ally with the Flood.

Notes

• The Flood were created by Bungie where they featured in the setting of the Halo universe.
• Further background on their origins was shown in the Halo novels by writer Greg Bear.

Appearances

• Halo:
• Halo 2:
• Halo 3:
• Halo Wars:

External Links

• Halopedia Entry
• Halo Wikia Entry
• Halopedia Entry

This article is a stub. You can help Multiversal Omnipedia by expanding it.