Technology · 3:32pm Jun 2nd, 2019
Design seed
Designed by a Forerunner "pattern-weaver, a design seed contained the schematics for the piece of technology it was designed to craft, as well as the machinery required to convert the construction materials into the object under construction. In the absence of dedicated manufacturing facilities, the construction materials could be obtained from resources available on-site.
The Librarian acquired a design seed that was placed inside a mountain near the Didact's Cryptum on Erde-Tyrene, which then gave birth to a large ship for his escape. The machinery worked remarkably quickly; the mountain at the center of Djamonkin Crater was dismantled and reshaped into the core components within a single night. Once fully assembled, the seed had generated a large octagonal platform surrounded by eight curved pillars, each rising a thousand meters from the ground.
When the machine was activated, these pillars began to rotate around the central platform. As they spun, they projected hard light components, which used the raw materials obtained on-site and reconstituted them into the alloys and components needed to build the ship. The construction process was extraordinarily rapid; the Didact's ship was approximately one kilometer long, and yet the entire vessel was materialized in a matter of minutes.
Forerunners were known to use a special type of design seed called an upgrade seed to upgrade the vessels of other races when proper resources were unavailable for design seeds to create a Forerunner vessel for them.
Upgrade seed
Upgrade seeds were designed to be tailored to specific types of vessels from races other than the Forerunners. The upgrade seed would not change the outer appearance of the vessel. Instead, the upgrade seeds would only strengthen its existing materials by hard light bonding. Inside, quantum and hard light filaments would intertwine with the ship's existing systems, directed by smart upgrade code, to create a custom integration between Forerunner technology and the ship's current specifications and technologies. As a result, the upgrades were limited by the limitations of the ship's original design. While the designs could be applied in orbit, it was better to ground the ship and run on auxiliary power as the upgrade seed did its work.
Vacuum energy
Vacuum energy is an underlying background energy that exists in space throughout the entire universe. One contribution to the vacuum energy may be from virtual particles, particle pairs throughout the universe that blink into existence and then annihilate in a timespan too short to observe. Their behavior is codified in Heisenberg's energy–time uncertainty principle. The effects of vacuum energy are thought to influence the behavior of the universe on cosmological scales. In the early 21st century, humanity contemplated the theoretical possibility of using vacuum energy to create free energy machines. It was argued that due to the broken symmetry (in quantum electrodynamics), free energy does not violate conservation of energy, since the laws of thermodynamics only apply to equilibrium systems.
Vacuum energy originates from the beginnings of infinite numbers of alternate realities. When harnessed for power supply, these fledgling universes are drained of energy in their infancy, resulting in their premature deaths. Virtually all Forerunner technology utilized the practically infinitely available vacuum energy as a power source, making possible their myriad of technological marvels. These included the Halo Array, as well as the systems used to make their shield worlds, such as Requiem, completely self-sufficient.Forerunner reaction drives utilized vacuum energy to expel virtual neutrons from the rear of the vessel, giving it propulsion.
Slipspace bubble
A slipspace bubble is a pocket of alternate spacetime enclosed within an envelope of slipstream space. Because slipspace is a hyperdimensional spacetime, the contents of the bubble can be manipulated both spatially and temporally relative to the "normal space" of the outside universe. The science and technology required to create of slipspace bubbles is highly complex and thus out of reach for most civilizations below Tier 1; only the Forerunners and to some extent, the prehistoric humans and San'Shyuum, are known to have built such artifacts.
Combat skin
Combat skins, also known as fighting suits or battle armor, were a type of body armor used by Forerunner combat personnel. The Forerunners had a classification system for combat skins, running from Class 1 to Class 18, and possibly above. According to 343 Guilty Spark, the human MJOLNIR Mark V is ranked on this scale as equal to a Class 2.
The Quetzal armor is class 100.
Slipspace flake
A slipspace flake or slipstream crystal is a central component of a Forerunner slipspace drive. They are quantum-engineered crystalline devices, and were used aboard Forerunner spacecraft to modulate the ship's passage through the higher dimensions, being a major contributor to their markedly stable slipspace transitions due to how they mediate temporal and spatial anomalies inherent to many slipspace interactions. This reduces travel times by orders of magnitude over the crude alternatives used by less advanced species. All slipspace flakes were chipped from a central "core" crystal, the location of which was known only to the Master Builder. The exotic composition and slipspace interactions of the crystal were incomprehensible to even the Forerunners, and never replicated.
The Forerunner capital Maethrillian had an entire hallway located near the Council chamber decorated with millions of spent slipspace flakes, some adorning the walls and others built into rotating sculptures.
Elián thinks he can use them to find a way home.
