Halo who is the librarian

Forerunner-Flood War. Battle of the Greater Ark. Judgement of the Didact. Jul Jul 20, — Jul 23, Battle of Requiem. Aug Aug 31, Mission to Mount Kilimanjaro. Feb 7. 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.

The ship liberated us from the toxins and ash of our own endeavours, sanctifying our path. From it, we learned of the Forerunner legacy, the ubiquitous scatterings of their wake.

So many worlds contain their leavings and their structures, but only ours was blessed with a Ship, a teacher. It taught us all how to unlock the secrets of space and time, to build ships of our own that sail the stars to spread the word.

But it also seemed to ever nudge us in a direction, to build weapons of war — energy that could burn or sear flesh, vaporize bone. Technology that oft ekes conflagration from vacuum. And only now as I look into the flickering light and watch the parasite spread, do I understand why these wise and ancient people would push those who remained in such a destructive direction.

These cycles of violence have many of the same things in-common, brought about by intervention with technology that these civilisations were not ready for. But this technology did not solve their problems, nor provide any great wisdom. The responsibility the Forerunners left us was a magnificent one, but perhaps beyond our means and character. We are a greedy, squabbling lot. We clamber over each other for rank and privilege, and kill, maim, or betray for power.

The Forerunner mantle was one of responsibility, it seems. Perhaps we were intended to nurture rather than conquer. No, the desirable qualities of progress are simply not a matter of genetics or technology, which brings us to….

Use what you find to propel humankind. They wore personal armour equipped with their own artificial intelligence. This removed their need for sleep and provided them with some degree of functional immortality. 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.

Spark asked for access to the Domain where his friends were remembered so that his memory could join them, but the Librarian warned him that they were only echoes now, remembered only through the experience of the Forerunners and nothing more; and the bad lives alongside the good if he went to the Domain.

Spark suggested that the Librarian join him walking amongst the living by using an armiger body as he did, but she refused, stating it was not yet her time. The Librarian helped Spark to understand that the friends he had been searching for he had found in the crew of the Ace of Spades.

The Librarian stated that this personality imprint would go to join her other imprints at the Absolute Record while humanity must be given the tools to hold the Mantle of Responsibility as well as the knowledge to tend to the Domain. Though Spark suggested that afterwards would be " Bastion ," he could tell that the Librarian did not believe that she would ever make it there or to anywhere else where she would find rest and peace at last.

With time running out, the Librarian offered Spark two choices: to go with her to the Absolute Record or to remain behind and help his friends. The Librarian offered him a small etched box that she called a key with which he was to "find what's missing.

Fix the path. Right what my kind has turned wrong. The two promised to see each other again in the future before the Librarian's imprint departed for the Absolute Record in a massive pillar of light that shot into the sky.

As she left, the Librarian appeared for a moment before the crew of the Ace of Spades with one look at her causing Rion Forge to understand Spark's devotion to the Forerunner. With one glance, Rion understood that her feelings towards the Librarian were a genetic disposition built into her very DNA, giving the Librarian a way to be heard, to inspire loyalty and to nudge her children to fulfill their full potential.

The Librarian communicated to Rion in that moment the trials ahead, the battles to come, the safe place, the things that needed tending and healing and a message to "take care of him. He is more fragile and important than you could ever know.

After their escape, Spark explained that the Librarian gave him a coordinate key to a safe place, but did not elaborate further upon it. He also admitted that he sought the Librarian to access the Domain and find the ghosts of his friends so that Spark could either bring them back as geas or join them.

However, they were unable to determine what she gave to him though they had access to the facility where the imprint was found. Meanwhile, Jul 'Mdama 's Covenant had located a "shrine" at " Librarian's Rest " where they believed the Librarian herself could be awakened.

After Dr. Henry Glassman was teleported by one of the Requiem translocation artifacts right into the clutches of the remnant, Jul put him to work in an effort to activate the shrine. Glassman, working with limited and outdated resources, only managed to activate the shrine's security systems, erecting a large and powerful shield around it.

When Jul touched the shield, the recoil was enough to knock him on the floor. Glassman managed to escape and was rescued by Spartan Gabriel Thorne. Jul needed to disperse the shield around the shrine. When Dr. Having a history of discussing with Jul, Halsey was allowed to freely approach the shrine, where she used her data pad to deactivate the shield and finally activate the shrine.

Before Jul could enter himself however, Halsey rushed in and entered it, angering him severely. Inside, the Librarian introduced herself to Halsey. She told Halsey that Halsey herself was to receive the gift that Jul had preached, not Jul. The Librarian then revealed the gift to Halsey: the Janus Key , a catalog that contains all the real-time locations of every Forerunner technology still remaining in the galaxy and demonstrated it by putting the two halves of the Key together, revealing a large star map with spheres encompassing locations containing Forerunner technology.

She also informed Halsey that she should take the Key to the Absolute Record. When Halsey hesitated, asking why the Librarian would hand her something of such value to her, the Librarian replied that Requiem's time was at an end and that humankind should use the Forerunner's technology to propel themselves upward as a species so as to not waste the resources left behind by the Forerunners. Halsey took the Key and was suddenly pulled out of the shrine, leaving the Librarian behind.

With Requiem coming to an end, the Librarian began using a structure at " Cyclone " to transmit herself to the Absolute Record. During this time, Fireteam Crimson was deployed to the area to track Halsey's transmissions and the Librarian aided Roland in decoding the data.

With "Cyclone" under attack by Promethean forces, the Librarian activated beam turrets and sent Aggressor Sentinels to the area to aid Crimson. After clearing the area, Crimson opened the breaker on the power source in the area, allowing both to complete and Roland to track Halsey to " Control.

Lani Truman to analyze as the Librarian was sent to the Absolute Record. The shield world was consumed by the sun shortly afterward, but both Jul's forces and Infinity's were able to escape the destruction.

At the Absolute Record, it turned out the Librarian's imprint had made it and was waiting for Halsey. When Halsey arrived forcing control of the record from the Custodian , the imprint discussed what Halsey could do with the record.

The Librarian was an elusive figure of immense intellect and knowledge, her true motives and goals often incomprehensible to others. She had an expert understanding the passage of what the Forerunners called Living Time , the progression of history and the streams of individual and collective fates therein. This enabled her extraordinary abilities of foresight, allowing her to make complex plans for countless millennia to come.

Despite caring for life in general, she did not have qualms about sacrificing individual lives or manipulating the course of an entire species if it served a greater purpose. This mentality was most prominently demonstrated by her approval of the firing of the Halo Array; despite causing the deaths of untold billions, the Librarian, despite having initially opposed the Halos in a similar manner to her husband, eventually came to see it as necessary to stop the Flood, which would have ultimately assimilated all life.

While the Librarian greatly valued and cherished all life, [1] she also understood better than most that life is at its core competition and struggle, and that all civilizations are ultimately most concerned with their own interests. She was well aware long beforehand that these factors, as well as the Forerunners' refusal to admit them, would eventually lead to their end.

Then, it assumed a form, rising around me like a beautiful building with gleaming, indefinite architecture, not quite seen but definitely sensed, felt — a lightness that carried its own sombre joy. And everybody who had ever visited the Domain said to me: Preserve. The lightness vanished instantly.

The building was being carved apart just as our ship had died. These came with a rising scream of anguish, as if I had plugged into a chamber where essences were pouring forth more than recall and knowledge — pouring forth frustration, horror, pain. Had I imagined it? It had seemed so real.

Then a word flashed into my revived mind, echoing from the image I had just seen or imagined or conjured up from anoxia. That single word connected intimately with the precious little the Domain had revealed to me: Death.

Massive power. That word was Halo. The screen fades to black and the Chief suddenly finds himself in a strange-looking cave certainly not something that typically appears on a space station , where he is contacted by Cortana and warned:. Meridian is next. John, the Reclamation is about to begin. What we are seeing in this scene is the Domain, wiped of its living knowledge, existing as a barren wasteland.

Your bio readings are all over the map. She intends to seal them in a Cryptum for ten thousand years while the Created reshape the galaxy.

This will be the first mainline Halo game to release in six years, opening the universe up to a whole new generation of players. That is the foundation that must be laid for the next ten years. However, these things are often a matter of presentation. As shown in the image above where the Chief sees what looks like a hologram of the moment Installation 07 shattered at the climax of whatever cataclysmic battle took place , we may well have moments like these presented to us as something filtered through the Domain.

The difference with what they can do now is present them as something that plays out in the game itself, not as a separate motion comic.

Alternatively, I could well be wrong on all counts. There may well be something entirely different going on. I am simply looking at how these unresolved story beats might be interwoven with the strategy has landed on to move the Halo universe forward.