originally posted in:Halo Archive
As far as we know 'it was' basically a massively advanced computer that housed not only the forerunners history but also the entirety of precursor knowledge. Currently it's status is unknown in the book Silentium the flood key mind told the librarian that activating the Halo's would destroy the Domain. Yet recently we've had contradicting info saying the Domain is now open.
English
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It's not a computer. In fact, it's sentient.
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Truly? Wow I missed that part I knew it changed events and these changes where never corrected by the forerunners. But I never knew it was sentient.
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In Silentium, the Domain requests to testify to the Master Juridical. And in Halo 5, we have the Chief being requested by the Domain.
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I thought it was just like a super advanced recording system but with A.I added in so that records etc could be requested and watched. Is it a person like a forerunner or?...I was hoping more for star sized super advanced precursor knowledge base (kinda looking like an artificial star but blue/purple. If it's an actual being I will be a lil disappointed. It's known that while they could access it the Forerunners never discovered its location.
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The specifics on how it is sentient is unknown. We do know that people can be absorbed into the Domain, and that it has the remnants of personalities and consciousness of those dead. .
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Not just the dead, but everybody who has ever visited it and those who [i]will[/i] visit it. Remember the Ur-Didact says in Silentium that he has heard Forerunner descendants? [quote]"The Domain can only tell the living what they already know," he says. "Or what they've stored in its expanses. I wandered through all the corridors... so they appeared, anyway. Centuries of wandering through hallways and caverns and even deeper, darker places, lined and fitfully aglow with ancestral records and memories, upwellings of past visits, rarely by me, sometimes by our ancestors... on occasion, our descendants." "Descendants?" I ask. "The Domain keeps its secrets only with difficulty. It wants, it [i]needs[/i], to spread knowledge. It wants to tell us when we're being foolish, but it can only replay the emotions and memories of those who came before. Still, rarely, it violates its own rules." "What about our descendants?" I persist. "I felt their touch, their love. And yet, they were fading. The Domain is filled with sadness. A deep shadow has fallen over everything Forerunner."[/quote]
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I was going to say that, I just couldn't recall any specific moments to justify saying it. Very interesting how the Didact describes the Domain almost as a physical place. That excerpt, it's from when he's talking about his time in xankara during his first exile, right? With the Domain coming to prominence in the lore again, I'm beginning to wonder if the Composer is connected to the Domain in some way. The talk of a giant reserve of Composed essences in TN72H has me intrigues.