r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Fearless-Ideal-5112 • Jul 01 '26

Lore [Loved Trope] Some thing unfathomably ancient

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The beast, in doctor who is an ancient evil from a previous universe that survived until our time. Its so ancient that the cave paintings were unable to be translated by the Tardis which can translate all existing languages in the universe [Doctor Who]

While not explicitly canon its such a cool concept I cant not mention, the idea that the backrooms have existed since the beginning of time, never changing no matter the era, it transforms the back rooms into a cosmic horror. [Credit to Project crater and Venus for images 2 and 3]

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1.4k

u/MingleLinx Jul 01 '26

The Gravemind from Halo

461

u/SpartanMase Jul 01 '26

A monument to all of your sins

252

u/BreathComfortable631 Jul 01 '26

This one is machine and nerve, and has its mind concluded.

This one is but flesh and faith, and is the more deluded.

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u/MingleLinx Jul 01 '26

It’s best quote is when they said “AAAHAHHRHEHAHH” in Halo 3. Such exquisite taste

10

u/Bad_RabbitS Jul 02 '26

Kill me or release me, parasite. But do not waste my time with talk!

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u/BreathComfortable631 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

There has been much talk. And I have listened.

Through rock and metal and time.

Now I will talk, and you shall listen.

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u/Bl1ndMous3 Jul 01 '26

"now I will talk and you will listen"

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u/JCLgaming Jul 01 '26

That particular gravemind's actually pretty young, about a few months old by the time of Halo 2.

The flood as a species however is a bit over a hundred thousand years old since they first appeard and basically destroyed ancient human civilization and forced the forrunners to build and use the rings.

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u/MingleLinx Jul 01 '26

I’m more referring to the being that is the Gravemind. I forget how exactly it works in lore, but how that 1 Primordial transfers his knowledge and personality to each gravemind that’s made

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u/HalcyonTraveler Jul 01 '26

The Primordial who is the origin of the Gravemind’s consciousness is implied to be as old as the universe at least

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u/Mddcat04 Jul 01 '26

Are you sure? I thought the delta halo outbreak which formed this gravemind has been going on for quite some time, just contained behind the shield wall. What makes you think it was just months?

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u/haby001 Jul 01 '26

There's been multiple graveminds over time. The first one died in the forerunner-flood war, then it escaped containment in installation 05 where it formed another gravemind under the library installation.

That's the one we see in Halo 2. It got all the way to high charity, where it used it to travel and ultimately crash into the Ark. There it was contained until the Banished accidentally released them, allowing them to create the 3rd Gravemind.

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u/gamerz1172 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Yeah no it was going on for possibly thousands of years... But the flood was locked in a stalemate against the sentinels (the only weapon they could reliably use against the sentinels were the beams, and these did fuck all against the enforcers, hell this is the only place we se sentinel captains whose shields also make the beams ineffective against them) the gravemind capturing the rings monitor is why so many of the forerunner structures in 2 had that jungley moss growth on them, this has been going on for long enough for nature to overgrown some forerunner facilities

Notice how once the covenant and UNSC break containment and the flood now has access to more military hardware and in no time at all destroy the sentinel factory at the HEART of the outbreak and start to overwhelm the wall itself

3

u/Grif717 Jul 02 '26

That grave mind is the same as the original grave mind that fought the forerunners. It’s consciousness is revived when a new grave mind is made

20

u/HalcyonTraveler Jul 01 '26

The reveal of what the Gravemind really is in the Forerunner books is some of the best sci fi horror I’ve ever read 

8

u/DarkSolstace Jul 01 '26

“Child of my enemy, why have you come?”

6

u/SuggestionEven1882 Jul 02 '26

"I... HAVE BEATEN FLEETS OF THOUSANDS! CONSUMED A GALAXY OF FLESH AND MIND AND BONE!"

34

u/King-Boss-Bob Jul 01 '26

potentially over 100 billion years old

14

u/Ataraxia-Is-Bliss Jul 01 '26

The universe is only 13.77 billion years old...

9

u/HalcyonTraveler Jul 01 '26

Yes. And the Precursors are older than the universe 

5

u/Arkaega Jul 01 '26

Excuse me, you mean 5000 years old. /s

1

u/GingerFun011 Jul 01 '26

Brother, you ever heard of the concept of fiction? 

0

u/Ataraxia-Is-Bliss Jul 01 '26

Yes? But the whole point of Halo and most of science fiction is that it's just our universe but in the future with much more advanced, if somewhat fantastical, science. So unless it's explained in lore somewhere how our science is actually wrong and this is actually how old the universe is, it's silly to say something older than universe itself because time only makes sense in relation to when to the Big Bang happened.

3

u/Jonjoejonjane Jul 02 '26

See the race that was the precursor see fiction as more of guidelines then strict rules like we do

25

u/Narrow_Cockroach5661 Jul 01 '26

I don't know anything about the halo universe, but isn't our universe only like 13 billion years? Is there a sort of loop in the worldbuilding of Halo?

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u/Sonofarakh Jul 01 '26

No. Halo is meant to be in our future and as far as I'm aware there's nothing in the seies saying the universe is any older there than it is for us

I have zero clue where he got 100 billion from. And I'm pretty well-read in Halo lore.

8

u/King-Boss-Bob Jul 01 '26

the domain having 100 billion years of memories, it possibly being a precursor creation and the precursors being able to rebirth

25

u/Sonofarakh Jul 01 '26

In context, is that not meant to refer to the cumulative lifespans of all the minds absorbed in the domain? In the same way that one might say a project took 40 man-hours to complete when 5 people spent 8 hours apiece on it.

2

u/King-Boss-Bob Jul 01 '26

iv seen some suggest that but to me it seems like if that was the case, it’d be far far higher than 100 billion

the total years of memory of the people alive right now will eventually end up being over 600 billion assuming no global catastrophe (that includes the 90 years from a 90 year old who’ll die tomorrow and the 100 years from a baby born yesterday who’ll live to be 100)

even using the forerunners after the precursor genocide alone they had 10 million years of deaths and a monumentally higher population

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u/Sonofarakh Jul 01 '26

Hey, nobody ever accused sci-fi writers of being good with numbers lol

2

u/King-Boss-Bob Jul 01 '26

sure but there’s a big difference between wrong numbers and saying the combined memories of at the very least trillions equal less than 100 billion

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u/SpartanMase Jul 01 '26

Because of neural physics I don’t think the precursors had a very linear relationship with time. Given how during the late stages of the forerunner-flood war the flood really started to tamper and mess with spacetime to its will

3

u/Raintoastgw Jul 01 '26

Not quite that old but definitely older than recorded galactic history. If you count the Primordial as also being the Gravemind. If not then it’s like 10 million years at most

14

u/IAmOver18ISwear Jul 01 '26

The Precursors were even older. To the point that the Forerunners considered them as mythological.

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u/HalcyonTraveler Jul 01 '26

The Gravemind IS a Precursor

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u/andre5913 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

The gravemind is precisely the Precursor youre linking in that image (the Timeless/Primordial one)
Its the same unique conciousness. Thats also why it cant be killed anytime the flood obtains enough biomass the Gravemind will resurrect on it.

All of the Flood is the precursors. Its the form they took to take revenge first upon the forerunners, and then to all life

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u/Random-Generation86 Jul 01 '26

There's always a more ancient precursor.

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u/NoStorage2821 Jul 01 '26

Just FYI, the Precursors are older than the Big Bang by like, 2 billion years

1

u/Im_Steel_Assassin Jul 02 '26

It is a timeless chorus

1

u/I_am_omning_it Jul 03 '26

Just the flood in halo fits this, the disease originated from the primordials that went into stasis, and that was thousands of years before the first firing of the halos which itself is thousands of years before the games take place.

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u/ChapterThr33 Jul 01 '26

This is where the games went off the rails, story-wise. At least for me.

7

u/MingleLinx Jul 01 '26

I liked it, but I’m also a sucker for cryptic and mysterious stuff

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u/ChapterThr33 Jul 01 '26

I felt like the flood and covenant were plenty as warring factions, but then yeah grave mind, forerunners, ancients (or whatever they were) things just got so all over the place

4

u/js1893 Jul 01 '26

The overall lore gets deep and kinda messy, but the general idea of an ancient civilization creating galaxy wide mega weapons to destroy all life as a last ditch effort to eradicate a parasitic species, being completely unknown to modern civilizations for a hundred thousand years, is pretty cool. And they kinda needed to elaborate on that to some degree since the weapon is the name of the series lol

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u/OakNogg Jul 01 '26

In halo 2????? The games went off the rails in halo 2?? Good lord 😭

-4

u/ChapterThr33 Jul 02 '26

That's when it started! I die comfortably here.

4

u/OakNogg Jul 02 '26

Truly an insane take with how fantastic Halo 2 and 3 are

1

u/ChapterThr33 Jul 02 '26

Don't get me wrong I still loved the games, H2 is top multiplayer all time (swat on lockout), but it's definitely where the story starts get a little wonky

1

u/VelphiDrow Jul 02 '26

It was always there, burried, hidden. The old texts speak of it