| “ | I...? I... am a monument... to all your sins. | „ |
| ~ Gravemind revealing itself to the Master Chief, Cortana and Thel 'Vadam. |
| “ | Arm. Weapon. Sharp. Cut. Hunger. Become. More. Memories. Training. Hunger. Weapon. Fire. Kneecap. Fall. Devour. Others. Fleeing. Leaving. Horizon. Fire. Death. A ship. Condor. Approach. Swarm. Hunger. Charging. Sprinting. Slicing. Food. Leave behind. Condor. Aboard. Devour. Depart. Become. | „ |
| ~ The Gravemind repeating its words of what it sees after it possessed Julien. |
The Gravemind is one of the two main antagonists (alongside Prophet of Truth) of the Halo franchise.
It is a parasitic hive-mind intelligence and the leader of The Flood. The Gravemind is a collection of the sentience and knowledge that has been gathered by the victims of the Flood.
It was voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, who also voiced General RAAM in Gears of War, Ra's al Ghul in the Batman: Arkham series, Crosshair in Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Bubble Bass in Spongebob Squarepants, Klaus Heissler in American Dad and Tarrlok in The Legend of Korra.
Biography[]
Past[]
The Primordial was one of the remaining Precursors who survived the Forerunners' genocidal campaign against the Precursors before what's left of them faded in powder and mutated into the Flood while others were put into stasis. He evolved to survive a large amount of time and was placed in stasis in an asteroid by the early Forerunners.
Decades before the end of ancient humanity's two-frontal war against the Forerunners and the Flood, he was found and retrieved by ancient humans and taken to an arena on Charum Hakkor where they begin interrogating the creature. When they asked about the Flood, the Primordial lets out a disturbing response to them that most of them committed suicide, presumably corrupting them with logic plague. The Didact and his warriors made their discovery of the Primordial following their arrival who then converse with him as he claimed himself to be the last Precursor. The Ur-Didact soon alerted the Forerunners about their discovery and the Primordial was taken to Installation 07 to be studied by Medicant Bias.
After decades have passed, he explained Medicant Bias about the nature of the Flood and the Mantle and persuaded him to lead the Flood-infected forces across the galaxy as well as taking control of Installation 07. His control of the installation was short-lived however as he was captured and imprisoned by the Iso-Didact. The Iso-Didact makes an interrogation with the Primordial where he told him about the Flood and the Precursors and revealed the Flood are inevitable due to a lack of a true cure against them. Enraged by this reveal, the Iso-Didact destroys the Primordial, killing his psychical body, but his conscious mind survives and reincarnates into the high intelligence of the Flood, becoming the Gravemind while Medicant was decommissioned for his crimes against the Mantle.
He meets the Ur-Didact once again after capturing him but was shown furious for the death of his original body. He soon tortures the Ur-Didact by infecting him with logic plague which would drove him insane to the point of demoralizing the Forerunners. After escaping, he declares that he will continue to live as long as the Flood succeeded.
He then reactivates Medicant Bias and with his support, they begin an assault on the Greater Ark and Gyre 09, destroying these installations and take advantage of consuming the galaxy, heading straight to Installation 00. Despite this, the Halo Array activates as the beam eradicates the Flood-controlled forces across the galaxy with the surviving Flood held buried in the rings.
Halo: Combat Evolved[]
While not shown, it is implied that the surviving Marine is infected with the logic plague after being spared and goes insane trying to kill Master Chief. The Gravemind's voice is also heard in both Halo: The Flood and the ninth terminal of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. During the moments of the Flood outbreak in the Battle of Installation 04, Cpt. Jacob Keyes of the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, was captured by the Flood and brought to the crash site of the Truth And Reconciliation where he would be heard telling Keyes to forget everything while Keyes tried to resist his logic plague in him to no avail. At one point, he then asked him where Earth is before demanding him to tell him its location. Using Keyes' intellect, he was nearly close to rebuilding himself through a Proto-Gravemind until Master Chief arrives and puts Keyes out of his misery while the Covenant Spec Ops team destroyed the Proto-Gravemind thus including Installation 04's destruction, obliterating all the Flood forces on it.
Halo: The Graphic Novel[]
While again not shown, it would guide the Flood to a Covenant ship, Infinite Succor, and infect the Covenant personal in the ship except the Minister of Etiology during the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. Rtas and his team of Spec-Ops, in response to the skirmish, expected to find the Master Chief and the UNSC responsible only to find the Flood instead. They meet up with Etiology who witnessed the Flood rebuilding the Gravemind as another Proto-Gravemind and in response, Rtas advises a plan to set the coordinates to a nearby star to destroy the Flood when they make their escape, but Etiology proves much of a complication due to trying to delay the plan to make matters worse and Rtas executes him in response. Eventually despite the losses, Rtas made it to the slipspace engine while noticing a reanimated Etilogy who is under the Gravemind's logic plague taunting him while Rtas ignores him. He then noticed his sub-commander, Bero, semi-infected and also corrupted by Gravemind's logic plague, provoking Rtas to be forced to fight him and end his misery. Eventually, Rtas made his escape and the Infinite Succor got destroyed after reaching the sun, killing off the remaining Flood in the ship.
Halo 2[]
The Gravemind makes his physical first appearance halfway through Halo 2's campaign. Using his tentacles to save the Master Chief and Arbiter from perishing, Gravemind brings them face to face in a chasm on Delta Halo. Gravemind reveals to the Arbiter that the ring's architects, the Forerunners, died when they activated the installation in order to stop the threat of the Flood; the Master Chief verifies what the creature says, having stopped the firing of another ring in Halo: Combat Evolved.
Though the Arbiter does not accept the truth immediately, Gravemind sends the Master Chief to the Covenant city High Charity and the Arbiter to the Halo's control room in order to stop the deluded Covenant from killing all sentient life a second time. Though he promises an alliance, Gravemind has ulterior motives. His Flood infest the human ship In Amber Clad and makes a slipspace jump into High Charity itself, in an effort to use the station to escape the confines of Halo. Having taken over the city, Gravemind questions the A.I. Cortana, who was left behind to destroy High Charity if Halo was activated. Gravemind says that he has questions that he will ask, and Cortana agrees to answer them.
Halo 3[]
Later, after torturing Cortana to learn what she knows, the Gravemind finishes assimilating High Chairty, turning the Covenant City into a massive Flood Hive. It begins to plan its next move, invading Earth, sending a infested Covenant ship out after breaking through the quarantine the Elites had set up around High Charity. One Marine witnessed this and heard its voice speaking through the combat forms, causing him to be infected with the logic plague and goes insane implying that he committed suicide offscreen. Its voice would be heard speaking telepathically in Chief in the crashed ship, telling him not to be afraid claiming to be peace and salvation and tells him it is a timeless curse and convices him to join him but Master Chief avoids it and grabs a message from Cortana while the Sangheili ships glassed half a continent to prevent the Flood from spreading even more.
After learning that its attack had failed, also realizing from the information it had extracted from Cortana that the Prophet of Truth was heading for the Ark, a Forerunner world that could activate all of the Halo arrays, the Gravemind slipspace jumps to the Ark, the super-hive that had been High Charity crashing into its surface before quickly spreading the Floods infection outward.
When it became apparent that Truth was on the verge of activating the Halo rings, the Gravemind made the startling choice to ally itself with the Chief and Arbiter, fighting by their side in their assault of the control room. However, once the threat was averted, the rings deactivated and Truth was killed by the Arbiter, the Gravemind turned against them, laughing maniacally while proclaiming in a sinister tone, ¨Now the gate had been unlatched, headstones pushed aside! Corpses shift and offer room, a fate you must abide!¨ To this, the Arbiter comments, ¨We trade one villain for another¨
Later on, the Gravemind, speaking through the logic plague in the Chief, begins to taunt him as he makes his way through the Flood infested High Charity in search for Cortana, growing increasingly enraged as Master Chief continues to survive all the Gravemind throws at him. When the Chief at last does find Cortana, the Gravemind begins to howl in a feral, primal fashion once it realizes that Cortana possess the Index Key needed to activate the newly created replacement Halo Ring.
Afterwards, despite the Chief injuring it by overloading the reactor of High Charity, the Gravemind launches all of its forces against him and the Arbiter, trying and failing to stop them from reaching the Control Room to the Halo. Using the logic plague, it questions on who is the real victim and who is the real foe while attempting to rebuild itself on the Halo, yet it failed to convince the Chief as he avenges a dying Johnson against a rampant Guilty Spark and activates the Halo with Cortana's help inserting the Index into the controls. Seemingly accepting its fate once it realizes the Halo is about to fire, the Gravemind laments openly how its defeat was simply adding to the punishment imposed onto it by its enemies.
The Halo then fires, the blast tearing the installation and the Ark apart, destroying all traces of the Gravemind, at least for the time being.
Saturn Devouring His Son[]
While not physically, its voice is heard through remnants of the Flood that are within a buried Forerunner starship within an asteroid, which would become known as Site 22. It is revealed that its consciousness survived the destruction of Installation 00 and relocated itself to Site 22 while it would repeat each word as it waits for its next return. A few years after the end of the Human-Covenant War, acooperation of UNSC and BXR Mining Corporation soon discovered this and searched to investigate only to end up discovering the Flood and get themselves infected. Losing contact, Fireteam: Leviathan was sent to contain the infection rather than to destroy the entire site. The containment, however, failed as the team had fallen to the Flood as well as one of the Spartans, Julien Donney, became infected and possessed by the Gravemind through its logic plague as its vessel. Without any other options, the UNSC forces were forced to send out nuclear missiles to destroy the site to obliterate the Flood. But Julien, still under the Gravemind's control, survived by escaping using a Condor, implying its inevitable return elsewhere.
Awakening The Nightmare[]
After its escape, it would be able to communicate with its forces that survived Installation 08's array, giving them the opportunity to evolve and mutate through the remaining carcasses, making them more stronger and powerful than the last thanks to the logic plague still implanted in them to control them telepathically in their bodies. A few years later, they were accidentally released by the Banished and so the Gravemind guided the Flood to attack them as they supply themselves with carcasses to create more attacker forms and use the ability to possess and control vehicle with the logic plague implanted in them with the Flood biomass spreading through them while also absorbing the intellegence through the vehicles' comm net and the victims, thus forming itself into a bigger Proto-Gravemind. Unfortunately for the Flood, the plot to rebuild itself on Installation 00 was in vain with it being defeated by Pavium and Voridus and the rest of the Flood on it being contained by the Aggressor Sentinels. Despite this, the Gravemind is still elsewhere in the galaxy once again preparing the next potential return of the Flood.
Gallery[]
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Trivia[]
- "A Monument to All Your Sins" is the name of a famous achievement from Halo: Reach that is unlocked after meeting requirements "Complete each Campaign Mission on Legendary - alone". This achievement name was derived from the Gravemind's most well-known quote: "I? I... am a monument... to all your sins."
- In the Chinese version of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, the Gravemind's face is never shown due to censorship.
- It is implied that the Gravemind was directly responsible for Cortana's descent into villainy due to it torturing her and corroding her sanity.
- The Gravemind resembles Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors in terms of appearance, and is jokingly called the "Little Shop of Horrors Reject" by the Bungie staff, the original team behind Halo.
External Link[]
- Gravemind on the Halo Alpha Wiki
