Essence of theForerunner (Halo) - V1.3

By drinking this Essence made of hardlight, you have inherited the power of one of the greatest empires to ever exist.

• You may remake your body however you want. The exact details are up to you, but, as a default, you will be at the peak of health in all aspects (physical, mentally, emotionally, genetically, etc), and extremely resistant (if not outright immune) to degradation of that health in any fashion.

• You have become a Forerunner, a member of the lost progenitor race that ruled the Galaxy ages in the past. In general, Forerunners were superior to modern humanity in every way, with superior physical prowess, genius intelligence, longer lifespans, and far more advantages. You can choose exactly which Forerunner Rate you are a member of (with the corresponding mutations to match), or you can be an idealized merge of all the Rates.

• Optionally, you may appear as just an advanced human, as was originally intended by Bungie.

• You possess prowess, knowledge, and capability, comparable to the very best that the Forerunner Ecumene had to offer. You are more skilled in war than any human force could ever hope to be, your understanding of biology and genetics allows you to program ideas and knowledge into DNA itself, your political acumen could let you convince entire empires to follow you unconditionally, the objects you engineer could stand eons without any loss in function….all this and more is now within your grasp.

• You rank among the very best the Warrior Servants have ever seen, having mastered war and its various facets to the degree it could be considered a sort of art. Not only are you trained in every form of combat imaginable, but your grasp of tactics and strategy is nothing short of legendary. You are more than capable of utterly destroying a numerically and technologically "superior" foe with just strategy alone. Additionally, your mind is capable of easily keeping up with hundreds of thousands of individual units across a vast battle and controlling each as if you were personally there.

• Your prowess as a Lifeworker is nothing short of extraordinary, your mastery of biology and genetics unquestionable. You can effortlessly treat any injury, illness, or infirmity short of death. You can safely induce Rate mutations or similar genetic modification in any entity you wish, to the point where you can easily advance the evolution of more primitive races (and devolve them just as easily). You are also perfectly capable of replicating the organic "science" used by the Forerunner splinter society discovered by the Librarian.

• As a Builder, you might as well be a king of science and craft. You are an unrivaled innovator, inventor, engineer, and craftsman in general, capable of crafting wonders that others would deem impossible and making them last for eons without any degradation or loss in function. Your ability to invent and create is best described as "yes", and recreating Precursor structures like the Star Roads and science like Neural Physics is well within your abilities. Additionally, you are a statesman and leader without compare, capable of forming a devoted empire rivaling the Ecumene at its height with your charisma and charm alone. Your political acumen is such that you can have even your most hated enemies dancing to your tune while still believing they are opposing you and your goals.

• Your production capacity is utterly insane, to the point where building superstructures and even artificial worlds is the work of a couple of slow years, at absolute worst. Should you put effort toward making things? Well, no one else could even come close to comparing.

• You can retroactively "update" and expand your creations, technology, and possessions with any new technology or science you have access to, in case you don't want to go through the effort to replace the energy systems in your kilometers long ring-world with a more effective one.

• Of course, this is all just a minor example of what you are capable of.

• You are immune to corruption and infection in all forms, and your mind and will cannot be perverted or broken by others. Nothing that can be mustered by entities and forces like the Flood can negatively affect you, not even through something like the logic plague.

• The prolonged lives of Forerunners mean that it's easy for centuries to pass in the blink of an eye, even without external support. In your case, you are perfectly capable of living for entire eons (with all that entails) without any consequence to your well-being. You can keep enjoying life without being bogged down by boredom and the ennui of time, your memory will not fail and leave entire swathes of your life forgotten and lost, the deaths of loved ones will not destroy your will to live, and so on.

• As a Forerunner, you possess your own personal armor/Combat Skin. In general, this armor, even the civilian model, is on par with even the powered suits used by humanity, such as the MJOLNIR. They provide protection physically and mentally, enhance memory and mental processing, providing medical treatment and granting borderline immortality, all on top of having a personal Ancilla (or AI) to help manage it all. Some even have the ability to generate torsion fields to grant something between a tractor beam or telekinesis. Combat Skins are even more powerful, with lower rank Skins being capable of utterly trashing even the best personal equipment humanity and the Covenant have to offer, and even being capable of adapting to the attacks of foes to become borderline invincible. Of course, that is but a taste of the power that your armor is capable of. You can freely customize how your armor looks and what functions and features it has.

• You have your own AI companion, comparable to Contender-Class Ancillas. This AI, which can be housed in your armor or any other storage device, is capable of blowing any number of Smart AI out of the water even at a fraction of its full potential, let alone what it can do with actual effort. Moreover, this AI is capable of constant evolution and growth, allowing it to eventually rival even something like Culture Minds in time. This AI is of your own design, having the voice, appearance, name and personality you want it to have. You can also choose exactly what sort of relationship you two have, from the AI being a servant to a caretaker to someone who loves you. But no matter what, the AI is irrevocably loyal to you, with the same absolute devotion to you that Cortana has to John-117. The AI is also immune to Rampancy, corruption, subversion, or other methods that would cause it to betray you, and can take on a physical form at will. Yes, you can use this to take and upgrade canon AI like Cortana.

• Should something happen and you lose your AI (or should they be destroyed), you can summon them or a fresh instance of them to your side at any time.

• You can summon to you any weapons, tools, vehicles, and other equipment from the Halo Universe and its various mediums, not just from the Forerunners. This also includes any ammunition or fuel they might need. You have full knowledge and experience when it comes to using whatever you summon.

• The advanced technology of the Forerunners has had negative effects on their natural instincts, as well as their ability to survive without such technology. In your case, however, this is not a problem, for you are capable of survival and success without your advanced technology and science. You are perfectly capable of starting a galactic empire from nothing.

• You can speak, write, and understand any languages and cultures from Halo, even those you should not be biologically able to.

• Like a certain SPARTAN, you have exceptional good fortune, allowing you to survive and thrive despite all logic saying you should fail catastrophically. This luck can manifest as finding weapons or other tools, being center for important events (or avoiding them, should you wish), as well as a variety of other expressions.

• You are capable of truly killing and ending any foes you face, even if they can manipulate time or are "godlike" beings with control over reality structures like the Precursors. This also means you can destroy foes without having to resort to galactic genocide to "starve" them out.

• This also means you are capable of creating technology that can defend against "exotic" threats and attacks, including Slipspace Reconciliation and time locks.

• You are a true holder of the Mantle of Responsibility, the duty of protecting other races and helping them develop. You can help uplift lesser races without risking the growth of greed, arrogance, or other traits. You can help develop an entire galaxy where peoples of all races and backgrounds exist in perfect harmony and satisfaction with each other. Unlike the Forerunners who usurped the Mantle, you are immune to the arrogance that prevented them from truly earning it, and are more than capable of empathizing and understanding other "lesser" races without any judgement.

• The Forerunners and their mastery of the galaxy led to them being respected and worshiped even millennia after they vanished, leading to the development of religious societies like the Covenant. You may optionally choose to have your own Covenant, a collection of races who follow and worship you, obedient and devoted to you to the point of gladly dying for your whims. Of course, you can also customize just how their loyalty manifests, should you want allies rather than zealots. You can customize everything about your Covenant, including rituals, laws, and even make up. Yes, you can include species from other settings.

• You have your own race of absolutely loyal Huragok followers, a race of biomechanical-pseudo computer workers with incredible prowess of technology. These include both Engineer and Lifeworker variants, and they can create more of themselves should anything happen to them.

• You become the owner and commander of the Mantle's Approach, the most advanced ship the Forerunners created. This warship is massive, but is frighteningly fast and armed enough to wage a war or ten on its own. The Mantle's Approach is composed of hardlight and programmable matter, easily allowing you to reconfigure and reshape it as you please. The ship is also completely self-sufficient, capable of providing its own food, ammunition, and other supplies, and doing its own repairs and maintenance with appropriate materials. It also has a version of the Vacuum Energy Siphon used by the Forerunners for power, granting infinite energy (without aborting alternate universes or any other such caveat). The Mantle's Approach can be flown and maintained by just your Ancilla companion, and you can summon it to your side (or summon yourself and others to it) at any time. Should it be damaged, lost, or destroyed, you can summon a fresh instance of it to you at any time.

• As an addition to the Mantle's Approach, you gain the ability to safely travel to other realities in the Omniverse.

• Optionally, you also gain authority over a perfect copy of Installation 00, the Greater Ark, positioned outside of the Galaxy. The Ark is a massive fortress and foundry, capable of making both Halo rings as well as any other Forerunner technologies. The Ark is exceptionally easy to maintain and upgrade, and can "remember" any upgrades or enhancements made to it. This installation also has a perfected Vacuum Energy Siphon for infinite energy (without aborting alternate universes or any other such caveat). You can also summon it to your side (or summon yourself and others to it) at any time. Should it be damaged, lost, or destroyed, you can summon a fresh instance of it to you at any time.

• Like the Mantle's Approach, the Ark possesses the ability to safely travel to other realities in the Omniverse.

• Optionally, you can take any other Forerunner structure or creation, such as the various Shield Worlds (at least 10'000 of them), Dyson spheres (at least 1'000), and other wonders that are left ownerless in the galaxy. Naturally, this includes much of the abandoned infrastructure and war material the Forerunners constructed across their reign. Much like the Mantle's Approach and the Ark, you can also summon any of them to your side (or summon yourself and others to any of them) at any time. Should any of these structures be damaged, lost, or destroyed, you can summon a fresh instance of them to you at any time.

• You have a renewing supply of raw materials and elements for whatever you might need: repairs, crafting, trading, what have you. This includes every element on the periodic table, plenty of titanium and other alloys, as well as the nearly indestructible materials used by the Forerunners.

• You possess a data storage unit containing the complete and unredacted information, knowledge, science, and other data from the Halo universe. This database is extremely intuitive and easy to use, will update based on the setting(s) you find yourself in, and possesses the ability to combine its data to produce new developments and more effective designs. Moreover, nothing in this database can harm you, not even memetic information. Should you lose it or have it be destroyed, you can summon a fresh copy to you at any time.

• You'll be given both the Domain (an esoteric quantum information repository that was once used by the Forerunners to contain vast amounts of knowledge, most notably their cultural & ancestral records), as well as Slipspace (FTL Dimension) access, this follows you around regardless of the universe that you travel to.

• You can use Slipspace as a kind of hammerspace/pocket dimension to store your things if you desire. This includes handheld items, weapons, vehicles, and even your ship and Ark (should you wish).

• You have a complete understanding of Slipspace and its properties and physics, and can use Slipspace no matter where you are. You can easily use Slipspace to quickly travel around the universe, and are even capable of using it for short range teleportation and other tricks.

• The Domain starts completely void of information & is meant to serve as a repository for your information. So no Abaddon either. Only you and those you designate can access these dimensions & you can revoke access at any point in time.

• These realms cannot be destroyed, corrupted, or sealed by any means.

• Nothing from this Essence can be stolen, subverted, or otherwise used against you. This also means anything you use/create can be blackboxed and immune to reverse engineering.

• If you feel anything is missing from this Essence or should be otherwise altered…..Fanwank responsibly.