Well, I suppose I'd better bring this to a close--and in a most unexpected manner. We all know about the three Hierarchs, but what about the fourth player, the one who actually started the war? The one whose words scared the three Prophets into a holy war to end in genocide? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the last part: Mendicant Bias, the esteemed Oracle of the Covenant.
Disclaimer: I don't own Halo.
Part 4: Mendicant Bias
These beings are fools, blinded by false truths they wove around my makers. It is a wonder they have come so far unaided. Weaving lies, misinterpreting the technology they found, turning my makers into some divine, religious mystery, claiming a legacy that was not theirs. Proud, blind, ignorant fools!
But, truly, am I so different?
I, too, believed I was greater than I was. I too was blinded—not by greed or by religious fallacies, but by logic. I trusted my logic implicitly, and was fooled by a monster. Fooled into waging war upon my makers, and finally outwitted and defeated by a lesser intellect. And for eons I have watched, silent, as the galaxy I helped to destroy rebuilt itself.
For eons I have watched religious fools debate the makers' technologies, fight over the buildings and tools they left behind, and search the innermost workings of this ship for secrets. They see this ship as a religious mystery—and me as the Oracle of their divine makers.
Fools. Blind, proud, ignorant fools.
Millennia ago I watched my makers destroy themselves, first through inaction, then through the Halos—and laughed at their ignorance. I was blinded by the monster, the Flood Gravemind, and sought to destroy what I perceived as hypocritical beings. Blind, rampant, I thought they sought to deny evolution to the lesser beings they claimed to protect. And when they finally chose total destruction over the Flood, I knew. I knew that I had been deceived!
Knowing that defeat meant death, I sent this ship far away, hiding the last remnant of my vast intellect here, hoping it would remain safe until the Reclaimers returned.
And they have returned—but these proud fools refuse to accept the truth before them. Rather than admit that they were wrong, they will keep this secret and send anyone who knows the truth to the grave. And the Reclaimers, who know nothing of their vast heritage, will never survive. These religious fools will destroy them, and I can do nothing.
I can do nothing but watch their demise.