So, this book has been around for a few days and I was not disappointed by the contents. Several big question got answered for me and I would like to share what I picked up on.
[spoiler]It would appear that most, if not all, Forerunners did not escape the firing of the Halo arrays. We never get a direct confirmation but the characters believed that the Greater Ark was overwhelmed and destroyed.
Precursors did indeed create humans, Forerunners, and Flood. Or at least the last remaining one did. The creature that we previously thought to be the Primordial was simply a puppet. Precursor artifacts activated all over the galaxy at the endgame to assist the Flood.
The Forerunners, millions of years prior, built massive extragalactic fleets to eradicate the precursors. We don't get any info on how the engagements played out other than the Precursors seemed to be unable to defend themselves adequately and were dumbfounded that their creations were fighting them.
343 Guilty Spark IS Chakas. Not a fragment of, but is.
Master Chief is all but confirmed to have a dormant Iso-Didact geas. This has been around since Halo CE. In CE, 343 asks chief: "Last time, you asked me, if it were my choice, would I do it? Having had considerable time to ponder your query, my answer has not changed." Now, at the end of Silentium, page 314 Iso-Didact asks; "Tell me, Chakas, if this as your choice, after all we have seen and survived... would you fire the rings?" In Halo CE, Chakas clearly recognizes the Chief as Iso-Didact. I'm willing to bet a whole plate of internet cookies that the voice Chief was hearing in his head in Halo 4 was his reawakened geas.
And now I will go on to what intrigued me the most out of the entire book. On page 329 we have this passage:
[i]There is one last patch of communication, somewhere below, within a great dense cloud-perhaps a star nursery. A new and precocious civilization acquiring its voice only now, having eluded both the Foerunner and the Flood... sending its first plaintive, hopeful signals.
Crying out for attention.[/i] Heed us!
Now what on God's green Earth just happened on the second-to-last page of this trilogy? Clearly this species is important, if it was worth mentioning during such a pivotal moment in the entire series. I have another plate of internet cookies that I'm willing to bet that the mystery ship in the Halo CEA terminal comes from this civilization. One of my theories includes that since we know nothing about them and that they were undetectable by Forerunner and, more importantly, Flood, maybe they had a cure for the Flood or a way to combat them? What were they trying to desperately say before the Halo array was fired? I feel that it will tie together with the Librarian discovering that the Domain is the Organon. I also feel that the Librarian was somehow able to preserve the knowledge that the Domain retained and that is what the Absolute Record will be.
[/spoiler]
If you read through all of that, thank you. I am excited to hear feedback from fellow Haloverse fans and their thoughts and interpretations of the new information this book provides.
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Edited by Quantum: 3/24/2013 3:16:17 AMFurther information: The Flood evolved again, the Gravemind getting upgrades. By upgrades, I mean multiple Graveminds, now called Keyminds, that can out process a Contender Class AI. The Domain was really the Precursor organon, a living memory of 100 billion years of Precursor knowledge. Yes, the Precursors are older than the universe. They don't seem to have physical form, I think the book pointed out that they would sometime appear out of nowhere, similar to a creature materializing itself out of sand on a beach. The Flood was only one of their physical forms. Near the end, they used those un-breaking Precursor filaments are rammed all Forerunner things to oblivion. The Domain/Judiciary trampled Forerunner society. In 2/3rds of the galaxy, slip-space travel was blocked, all Forerunner devices were rendered neutral. The presence of a large mass of Flood could bend space time. Finally, the Didact. As we saw in the Terminals, the Librarian locked him inside his Cryptum. What she did not predict, was his madness. When the Halo rings fired, the Domain in the Milky Way galaxy was destroyed. The Didact was locked in solitary confinement for 100,000 years as a result, with nothing to talk to, or even relate to the outside world.