Wound into the ancient lore of Halo and shrouded in the darkness that represents the unexplained portions of the franchise’s fiction, the tale of the Gravemind is one which is rarely spoken of. Although there has been a considerable amount of speculation since its appearance in Halo 2, very few hard facts exist which explain the nature and motives of the Gravemind, as well as its relationship to entities such as the Flood, the Forerunners and humanity.

For the uninitiated, the Gravemind is the complete aggregation of Flood Super Cells at their most concentrated state – it is an entity which controls the Flood parasite at large, directing the growth, movement and stability of all mobile and immobile parts.

Our first in-game encounter with the creature was in the dark bowels of Installation 05 –  Delta Halo. Upon assassinating the Prophet of Regret, the Master Chief fled the lake temple within which he had resided. The Covenant fleet, in hopes of finally ridding themselves of their Demon, leveled the structure. The Spartan was thrown into the lake and it was there that the Gravemind pulled our protagonist into its lair.

As the trilogy has now run its course, we’ve learned a variety of new things about the Gravemind and its purpose. This new knowledge has also given way to a significant amount of questions which, for fans of Halo’s story, beg to be examined.

The purpose of this article is to review the available data closely and make best guesses with the information we’ve been provided. That being said, the information found within contains some assumptions about events and characters. At its highest capacity, this piece should be used as a peripheral caveat of likelihoods based on facts.

So, let us push these headstones aside, crane our necks forward and take a bite out of that black heart of the beast we call Gravemind…

[Proceed to Part I]

Note: It is important to reiterate that the following material is an interpretation of events based on information found within the following individual sources: Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, the Terminals of Halo 3, the alternate reality game “Iris” prior to Halo 3’s launch, the Bestiarum guide, Halo: Contact Harvest by Joseph Staten and several other sources directly from Bungie.net.

When constructing this article, the author created a detailed bibliography, but the volume of such a supplemental (and the work it would take to make it as comprehensive in text as it needed to be) outweighed the anticipated usefulness of such a piece. For this reason, the bibliography will not be included. If you have any questions on the veracity and application of specific events within this text, feel free to contact the author to have specific sources supplied and/or explained.