Who will live to return here? Those I have fought for, for so long. Those who, it is clear to me now, ultimately will and must inherit the Mantle.
I can only hope that they will survive and upon returning, that they will find this portal and use it to travel to the Ark — in order that they might discover their rightful place in this galaxy, and the great responsibility they have finally inherited. They are the last of my children. They must reclaim their birthright. As much as she genuinely cares for and loves life, it is abundantly clear that humanity is something of a vanity project.
She even altered her own appearance through the Forerunner process of mutation to appear more human. I once had an eye for beauty among all rates. She is in many ways flawed: a tilt of one eye, slanted lower lip, unseemly whiteness of teeth. She seems to have deliberately adopted a few characteristics of those humans she now collects. I see very clearly how much the Librarian has shaped humanity since the end of the first human-Forerunner war.
Whenever you look inward and see an ideal female… whether it be goddess, anima, mother, sister, or lover… For a brief, barely sensible instant, you will see the face and feel the spirit of the Librarian. Naturally, we must acknowledge that, on a technological level, these are two different models. That ambiguity is also unimportant. The difference is there. It fits quite perfectly with the established lore and characterisation of the Chief, Halsey, and the Librarian… The Librarian wanted her mark left on the galaxy, to be known by those she fought to save.
She sees humanity as her children, the last of her children, after having lost all of her own ironically, in the war with ancient humanity, as all twelve of them chose to become Warrior-Servants alongside their father. After pouring so much time and investment into the devolved humans placed in her care — after their sacrifices against the Flood, their loss against her own kind, and the hideous torture they were subjected to — she felt it had to all be worth something to her.
When the Librarian trapped herself on Earth, the Gravemind sent down the souls of Forthencho and other ancient humans to inform her that this was all for nothing. The Halos — which have already been fired — will destroy the Domain, condemning the Didact to countless millennia of madness within his Cryptum.
Bornstellar discovers the final message the Librarian sent him after this revelation, imploring him to return to Maethrillian — their fallen capital — in order to find a way to save the Domain.
In this, they succeed, which is how the Domain returned for Halo 5 something which, I would like to smugly note, I called in June The present state of the Domain, however, is stripped bare of the collective knowledge and wisdom it was said to hold. It appears barren, empty, and is now simply used as a vast network to control Forerunner technology across the galaxy. But her endgame — humanity inheriting the Mantle — is something to be opposed , not embraced.
Because of her vanity, her need to be remembered, her intervention, her desire for her actions to mean something, she has entirely missed that what she aims to perpetuate was the source of many of these problems in the first place. He would then claim the Janus Key, which reveals the real-time location of all Forerunner technology in the galaxy. Again, we return to technology. However, all the Gravemind did was distort and exacerbate prejudices and feelings that were already there…. Ships, weapons, bounties beyond our imagining.
And she will tell us how to make those miracles our own. The Mantle is an ancient philosophy in the Halo universe, stretching back to the time of the Precursors, many millions of years ago. It was also believed that, one day, the Forerunners would likewise part with this responsibility, that another would take their place. While many details remain obscure, some fragments have been revealed. As the Precursors conceived it, the Mantle was deeply tied to their esoteric concepts of neural physics and Living Time.
Suffice it to say, this is a mandate that the Forerunners fell horrifically short of, with devastating consequences for the galaxy. To the Forerunners, the Mantle belonged to one species. While their philosophy stated that they would pass it on, that they were just a temporary stage, it is clear from where we pick up the story in the Forerunner Saga that they had no plans for that to happen any time soon after ten million years as top dog.
We cannot say much about what the rule of the Mantle looked like under the Precursors, these strange transsentient beings that seeded galaxies with life and then moved on.
But we can say that the rule of the Mantle under the Forerunners was an ideology steeped in racism and imperialism, propagating the supremacy of one race above all others. The threat of death overpowering any celebration of life.
Those who did not comply were destroyed, or worse: Subjected to the horrors of the Composer, had Halo rings test-fired on their worlds to quell an uprising, or Guardians used to wipe out their technology and forcibly impose a Dark Age…. Belief in the Mantle sealed our doom! Weakened our [protectorates], bred dependence and sloth.
Our [so-called Guardianship] has stripped those we would keep safe of any capacity for self-defence! I had imagined that our [introduction] would be somewhat more violent. It is truly no wonder that they had no allies to call upon when the Flood came to their shores.
Halo: Cryptum , the first book of the Forerunner Saga, is all about exploring this. It is notable that the Flood do not make a single appearance in Cryptum.
All my young life I had lived on an invisible cushion of civilisation. The struggles and designs of thousands of years of history had brought me to this pinnacle. I had had to exhibit only the tiniest minima of self-discipline to inherit the place my family had planned for me: the life of a privileged Forerunner, the very notion of which I found so restraining.
My privilege — to be born and raised all unaware of what Forerunners had had to do to protect their position in the galaxy: moving opposing civilisations and species aside, taking over their worlds and their resources, undermining their growth and development — reducing them to a population of specimens.
Making sure their opponents could never rise again, never present a threat to Forerunner dominance, all while claiming the privilege of protecting the Mantle. How many species had collapsed beneath our hypocrisy, stretching how far back in time? What was myth, what was nightmare, what was truth? My life, my luxury — rising from the crushed backs of the vanquished, who were destroyed or deevolved —.
And what did that mean, precisely? Had the humans defeated by the Didact and his fleets been forced into sterility, senescence without reproduction, or had they been forced to watch their children subjected to biological reduction, to becoming lemurs again? Cryptum is a story about the blinding effect of societal privilege, perpetuating generational cycles of maintaining the power structures that ensure a stagnant status quo — against foes both without and within.
Making sure their opponents could never rise again, never present a threat to Forerunner dominance , all while claiming the privilege of protecting the Mantle.
I promise this to every man, woman, and child on Earth and in its colonies. While we will continue to strive for a peaceful coexistence with other species, humanity will never again allow itself to be the victim of aggression.
This is the moment we start to reclaim our rightful place in the universe. As I have oft remarked : this is not an aspirational statement for humanity, but the unmaking of ourselves as the villain. Seizing absolute power to ensure absolute security. The Prophets hoarded and controlled all Forerunner technology.
They spread the lie that humans are heretical, unclean, inferior, to cover up the ugly truth that their religion was based on a lie. For the truth to emerge, the Covenant would shatter. Just as it did with the Forerunners, who spent ten million years covering up what they did to the Precursors. The way of the Mantle.
If we who are honoured with life do not perceive the obvious, then we are forced to live it again, around another corner, from another angle.
Other species were brought into the fold, forced to accept and practice this ideology, totally shape their civilisations around the Great Journey.
While Halo 1 presented this story as one of survival for the human race, battling against all odds, it is Halo 2 which deepened it into a story about breaking a theocratic hegemony by exposing its lies — bringing humanity and the Sangheili together as allies, finding some reconciliation through this truth.
The Reclaimer Saga scales this conflict up, pulling the curtain back to reveal this cycle of violence throughout history. And while Halo 5 has a great many issues, it is no exception here.
In fact, Halo 5 brought this story to something of a confluence point. Halo 5 made this explicit in dialogue from the Master Chief and Exuberant Witness, condemning the Mantle. Step out of line, and suffer.
This is what the Librarian seeks to perpetuate. Even with the best of intentions, driven as she is by love and hope and desperation, this is what positions her as the ultimate antagonist of the Halo setting. It is not, in itself, progress. Progress comes through hard work and determination, which is obstructed by racism and prejudice — small-minded hatreds given systemic power when societies are led by those who exploit it for their own gain.
In Halo 4 , when the Master Chief meets the Librarian, this exchange ensues:. Your combat skin. Even your ancilla, Cortana. You are the culmination of a thousand lifetimes of planning. An argument I often see come up is that this story is bad because it strips humanity of agency and lessens our achievements by making things a matter of destiny.
This is what the story is about. When Commander Shepard meets Sovereign on Virmire and learns about the Reapers, this exchange ensues:. Organic civilisations rise, evolve, advance. And at the apex of their glory, they are extinguished. The Protheans were not the first. They did not create the Citadel. They did not forge the Mass Relays. They merely found them, the legacy of my kind.
By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution.
You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it. Millennia of societal and technological development were engineered by the Reapers in order to facilitate the ontological patterns of the same predetermined end every 50, years.
And Forerunner technology is guiding everybody in the Halo universe down that same destructive path. And she will tell us how to make those miracles… our own. What the Reapers and the Librarian are doing is essentially the same thing, forcing a civilisation to develop along predetermined paths for their desired outcome. The ultimate difference between them, really, is that she has a kinder face. Their recovery post-activation was aided considerably by the vast amount of Forerunner technology that littered their homeworld.
The ship is and has always been the key. It once stood on our secret world, just as majestic and mysterious as it is now, an enigma that drove our civilisation to greatness — the seed of all our discoveries. Our world — our true world — had been unkind to us, or I suppose, we to it. Soon after the Human-Forerunner War, the Librarian learned of the Flood and its potential threat to the galaxy. After successfully pleading the council to preserve as many humans as possible due to their possible knowledge of a cure for the Flood, she focused on studying humanity and aiding the Didact with the creation of his shield worlds.
She soon noticed the rapid development of humans and therefore hid their progress from the council, the Master Builder, and, most importantly, the Didact. After having lost every political battle for his shield world, the Didact was forced into exile. The Librarian, already planning for the future, hid him and his cryptum on Erde-Tyrene, also known as Earth.
Shortly thereafter, she came to believe that she had discovered the galaxy from which the Flood originated. She acquired a ship and crew to explore it.
They discovered a world of primitive Forerunners that her race far surpassed in technology. A native bit her: the bite seemed to transfer information—like a universal form of communication. The inhabitant then escorted the Librarian to a biological Domain. Having obtained a moss-like plant that seemed to hold yet more information from the same planet, the Librarian collected more data.
Upon returning home, she continued indexing the galaxy's species because the Flood had by then returned. The Greater Ark was the location of most of the Librarian's species and index samples, but during the end of the Forerunner-Flood war , she had to move most of her species to the Halo guarding this ark.
But things did not go as planned. The Librarian followed the Ur-Didact to the core of Requiem. She gained entrance to his chambers, wounded him with a Binary Rifle, and imprisoned him inside his Cryptum. She left with the knowledge that the Domain would undo what the Gravemind had done to him. Before leaving Requiem, The Librarian left an imprint of herself behind. Here, she learned the true nature of the ancient Forerunner expedition: ten million years earlier, the Forerunners had rebelled against the Precursors , and after exterminating all of their creators in the Milky Way, they had chased the Precursors down to Path Kethona.
However, some of the Forerunners who served in the fleets objected to the complete destruction of the Precursors as a crime against the Mantle and were either summarily executed or abandoned on the planet. Those who had carried out the extermination of the Precursors until the end never returned to the Milky Way, leaving the inhabitants of the planet as the only survivors of the expedition. Following this revelation, the Librarian and the rest of the crew returned to the ecumene aboard the Audacity.
She would not reveal the disconcerting truth to anyone until in her testimony to Catalog over nine hundred years later; although she was asked to testify earlier on, she rejected the request, suspecting that the Master Builder could somehow use the information for political gain due to the Builders' control over the Old Council and the Juridicals.
During the genocide of the species in Path Kethona , two Precursors had found shelter and were found by the Forerunners who hid them and tried to heal them. However, the Precursors were beyond their ability to save and although the Precursors possessed the ability to heal, they chose to let nature take its course. After dying, the two Precursors became samples that studied and encoded, seeds that germinated for a million years.
Sprouts that climbed to the surface took even longer and bloomed only in the last million years. Unlike the Primordial , these were Precursors that celebrated joy instead of relishing in suffering and as a result, the blooms are not left corrupted with violence and misery but instead are clean, beautiful and bright.
Driven by her own geas from the Precursors to fix the path and set right what the Forerunners did wrong, the Librarian located the specimens while in Path Kethona searching out the origins of the Flood and, returning home with the specimens, the Librarian kept her discovery out of her report to the Ecumene Council.
The Librarian enlisted the help of the crew of the Audacity to transform a small shield world in its construction phase, Bastion and make it what it needed to be to nurture this eventual new species. The Librarian created Bastion to resemble Earth completly. The Librarian had the starship Eden built to carry the Precursor seeds and blooms to a world outside of the Milky Way galaxy that is ideal for planting and growth and where they can't be reached by the Flood.
There, in some distant future, life on the planet will emerge and grow sentient, following the complete genetic code of the Precursors and rebirthing the race. However, they will be utterly free of genetic memory and will be able to build a new civilization with a clean slate.
Bastion became the Librarian's secret laboratory away from the Ecumene Council and their rules and regulations containing the Librarian's most dangerous research and experiments. This included studies and experimentation on ancient humanity , the Forerunners and the Precursors, ingenious observation and trials, studies with Living Time , working Composers , Cryptums and other endless mysteries.
At one point after the Didact went into exile in a Cryptum , the Librarian devised a complex plan to bring her husband back in order to fight the resurgent Flood. She imposed a geas on certain humans, causing multiple generations to attempt to pass the defenses surrounding the Cryptum, which she had relocated on Earth.
Finally, she secretly assigned an ancilla to manipulate Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting , a rebellious Manipular , to go to Earth in search for treasure and open the Cryptum. While the original Didact was believed to have been executed by Master Builder Faber some time afterward, he had performed a mutation to Bornstellar and thus imprinted Bornstellar with his consciousness. During the war, the Librarian traveled to the San'Shyuum world Janjur Qom to gather specimens of their species for storage.
The Librarian's visit caused unrest among the San'Shyuum, who began an uprising against the Forerunners soon after. Following this, the Librarian traveled to the greater Ark , where she later met with Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting, now almost completely under control of the Didact's personality.
The Librarian told Bornstellar that the Didact had been executed by the Master Builder and that the emergent IsoDidact was now all that remained of him. However, this was later revealed to be untrue, as the original Didact, now identified as the Ur-Didact , had in fact survived, resulting in the simultaneous existence of two Didacts.
The Librarian continued to work with the IsoDidact and eventually came to accept him as her husband, unaware of the survival of the original Didact.
In the final years of the war, she and the IsoDidact oversaw the evacuation of Erde-Tyrene , only to part ways as the IsoDidact departed to lead Forerunner defense from the Orion complex ; she would not see him again for four years. As she and her Lifeworkers continued their indexing effort, the Librarian gave her testimony on her Path Kethona expedition to Catalog , who had arrived to interview her and the IsoDidact, first revealing the truth of what she had learned over nine hundred years prior.
During the war, the Librarian traveled across the Milky Way galaxy at considerable risk to implement the Conservation Measure. She disregarded repeated pleas from the IsoDidact to return to the safety of the Maginot Line , considering her work as being much more important than her own life. Four years later, after the Ur-Didact had been recovered from deep within the Burn —the Flood-infested region of the galaxy—the Librarian ceased her work to reunite with both incarnations of her husband in their home on Nomdagro.
During the reunion, it soon became apparent that the Ur-Didact's sanity had been severely shaken by his traumatizing encounter with the Gravemind , which was now using her husband as a pawn in its own schemes.
In his growing madness, the Ur-Didact declared the Librarian's favoring of humanity as contrary to the Mantle and that the Forerunners should hold onto their dominance through violence and subjugation.
While she and her husband had always had a difference of opinion in regard to humanity, the Ur-Didact's newfound extremism greatly appalled and distressed the Librarian. The Librarian's worries for the Ur-Didact were proven true during the Flood's assault on the greater Ark , when the Ur-Didact unexpectedly used a Composer to digitize the population of Omega Halo , which harbored the last major population of humans, relocated from the greater Ark to make room for Forerunner refugees.
Outraged and grief-stricken, the Librarian contacted Chant-to-Green to travel to Erde-Tyrene and gather any remaining humans there and transport them to the lesser Ark. She also ordered Monitor Chakas , who had saved a number of humans aboard a Gargantua-class transport , to find the IsoDidact and take him and the humans to the lesser Ark.
The Librarian herself headed to Requiem with the intent of imprisoning the Ur-Didact within a Cryptum , in order to prevent him from causing further harm and to allow him to recover via extended contact with the Domain.
Upon arrival at Requiem, she discovered the Ur-Didact's scheme to use the harvested essences of both humans and Prometheans to build an army of mechanical warriors not only to fight an extended war against the Flood, but also to eradicate all potential threats to Forerunner power. Although Endurance appeared adamant in her support of the Ur-Didact, the Librarian managed to use the Promethean's lingering doubts about the Ur-Didact's state to convince her that the Cryptum was the best solution for him.
The Librarian then personally incapacitated the Didact and sealed him within a Cryptum within Requiem's core. With the admission of Endurance-of-Will, the Librarian also uploaded an imprint of her personality within Requiem's systems in order to guide future visitors and taking control of the Promethean machines.
The Librarian intended for the Didact's mind to heal and cause him to realize the error of his ways while in meditation and hoped that he would take on the role of educating humanity on the Mantle and the Forerunners' mistakes once he awoke. Having finished her work on Requiem, the Librarian decided to use herself as bait and draw the Flood's attention away from the still-hidden lesser Ark before the IsoDidact could fire the Halo Array.
She sent a message to all active Forerunner ships, including those that were in the Flood's control, to attract them to the Erde-Tyrene. On Erde-Tyrene, the Librarian met with Chant-to-Green , who had only found a meager amount of remaining humans, most of the planet's population having been indexed earlier.
Upon detecting the presence of the Flood in the vicinity of the Sol System , the Librarian sent all her Lifeworkers and ships to Installation 00 and passed the title of Lifeshaper on to Chant-to-Green.
The Librarian spent the last days of her life on Earth in a savanna near Mount Kilimanjaro , overlooking the automated construction and burial process the Portal to the Ark.
The Librarian remotely destroyed the remaining Keyships under her control to prevent the Flood from reaching the Ark. However, the rescue party was destroyed by Mendicant Bias as it attacked the Maginot Sphere on its way to the lesser Ark. After the Flood arrived in the Sol system, the Gravemind sent humans haphazardly imprinted with the essences of Forthencho, Lord of Admirals and three of his warriors, to deliver a final mockery to the Librarian. Forthencho revealed what the Gravemind had told him; the true extent of the Precursors' power, and their greatest creation: an enormous field projected by Precursor architecture, serving as a repository for a hundred billion years' collated knowledge — the Domain.
To her horror, the Librarian realized that by firing the Halos, the history of both Forerunners and Precursors would be lost forever, and that if the Domain was destroyed, she would have doomed the Ur-Didact to spend the coming eons in complete silence in his Cryptum, dwelling on his own insanity and rage. She sent one final message to the IsoDidact on the lesser Ark, in which she conveyed what Forthencho had told her, [28] but the IsoDidact ignored the transmission, believing it to be a fake.
Before the firing of the Array, and unknown to Catalog, the Librarian would record in a coordinate key the key events of her life. The Librarian perished moments afterward when the IsoDidact activated the Halo Array, wiping out all sentient life in the galaxy. Over a century after her death, the IsoDidact , now going by Bornstellar Makes Eternal Lasting again, often viewed holographic recreations of his time with the Librarian as a way of remembering and mourning her.
After remembering that she sent him a final message through Catalog , Bornstellar watched it for the first time and learned of the Librarian's discovery that the Domain was a Precursor artifact that would be destroyed when the Halo Array was fired. In response, Bornstellar led a mission to the Capital to get the slipspace flakes needed for the Forerunners to leave the galaxy and to restore the Domain through the Organon.
By sacrificing herself to use the deadbolt key , Growth-Through-Trial-of-Change succeeded in beginning the regeneration of the Domain, fulfilling the Librarian's last request.
Although the Librarian herself perished on Earth, she left behind a number of essences , uploaded personality imprints in many ways indistinguishable from her original self. These constructs would later interact with by a number of individuals and continue to facilitate the Librarian's plan over , years after her physical death. Through her imprint, she was able to influence the Aggressor Sentinels on Requiem, having them guide John to a place where she could contact him.
She explained to John about the origins of the Human-Forerunner War and the Didact's decision to devolve humanity as a punishment. Only afterwards were the Forerunners made aware that the war with humanity was a result of mankind expanding - not out of conquest, but out of fear and necessity, as they were desperately attempting to halt a Flood outbreak which had spread beyond their own borders and into Forerunner-controlled space.
The Librarian informed John of the Ur-Didact's plan to use a device called the Composer to forever imprison all of mankind into digital form. For him to be able to stand against the Didact, she must alter the Master Chief's genetic code, making him immune to the effects of the Composer, to which he agreed. She revealed to the Spartan that she had been guiding mankind throughout the millennia since their reseeding , providing a blueprint for their evolution, their technological advancement, their Spartan program , the MJOLNIR armor and even Cortana; all in an attempt to prepare them for what is to come.
The Librarian told the Chief that he was the culmination of all her planning, what she was attempting to create with her actions. The Chief questioned her "Planning for what? The Librarian had uploaded another essence of herself in a Forerunner complex beneath Mount Kilimanjaro , near the site of her death.
Following his near-destruction at the conclusion of the Human-Covenant War , Guilty Spark had come to believe that the Librarian was still alive.
Salvaged from the ruins of Installation 00 by the crew of the UNSC Rubicon , the monitor uploaded his personality construct array aboard the Rubicon and set a course for where he believed the Librarian could be found. Spark was recovered three years later by the salvager vessel Ace of Spades and forged an alliance with the crew to find the Librarian, eventually leading them to the Forerunner facility at Mount Kilimanjaro. In the facility, Spark and the Ace of Spades crew discovered a Lifeworker pod.
After revealing the truth to Rion Forge about her father's death, Spark entered the hard light beam containing the pod, where he encountered a personality imprint of the Librarian awakened by Spark's entry. Calling Spark by his human name, the Librarian recognized that she hurt her old friend greatly, but also expressed pride at what he had become.
The Librarian revealed the awakening of the Ur-Didact on Requiem and her imprint there and expressed her hope that humanity would be able to achieve what the Forerunners could not and warned that darkness was coming from many sides for humanity. The Librarian realized that Spark wished to raise his old friends and reminded him of what he went through as Chakas while carrying the personality imprint of Forthencho , Lord of Admirals and asked if he would do the same to others to bring back his friends who were now at peace, though she acknowledged that she did the same with Chakas for the greater good.
The Librarian assured Spark that his friends were left to live their lives out in peace, their gene song quiet.
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