Hehehe...twats... (in the same tone in which Homer goes "Hehehe...mule")
I do not believe the Forerunner created any life form. At the most, the Index probably holds all the cloned DNA of life-forms throughout the galaxy to reseed the galaxy of life after Halo fires.
Those servers tell a thousand words, but alot of people don't have a clue what they mean. I guess it's only for the hardcore.
The servers on the Halo 3 site is a bunch of scrambled transmissions that tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the Flood and how the Forerunner fought them to no avail.
The narration tells that the Flood is thought to be extra-galactic in origin. Meaning it must've originated outside of the galaxy, but where did it come from exactly is unknown. What's more weird is the twisted nature of the Flood biology-yes, they do seem to have biological properties to bacteria since alot of bacterium were shown. The mystery deepens when those bacteria are actually streptococcus. The videos show the Flood research labs, the Forerunner cities (for once we saw cities), how the Forerunner tried to study them. Then they got out of hand. The narration is from a Forerunner's perspective and does address they never expected the Flood to be so twisted that defies all laws of nature. Confirms the Flood is in fact intelligient-has a mind and spoke to them (likely Gravemind-I think in one shot tentacles are shown too) So they spead from planet to planet. The Forerunner fought them, but the Flood kept gaining more ground and the Forerunner is losing by the millions to the point the only last resort was to wipe out the galaxy to destroy them. But even the Forerunner dreaded the measure, so they decide to do some good. They retreated to the edge of the galaxy, found the early Earth and early man. They seem to take interest in humans, suggesting they might have solutions to their own woes and must be studied. They built the Ark on Earth, and it was for the humans. As they said, if they survive, it will be a good world for them. But if the Flood wins, then all is lost and everything will be a mystery forever. Still yet, the Forerunner did seem to plead whoever comes along in the future who finds their corpses and ruins to forgive and not blame them, for to wipe the galaxy is the only way to end the suffering. The video clips also show a bunch of schematics, alot of them mapping out Earth and star charts, encoded mathematical symbols, artifact location star charts, and showing the Forerunner ship streaking over the night sky. One is really weird. It's a spectral file that when run though, shows some kind of errie symbol. Some even claim to see Forerunner writhing in agony between the white noise static.
One of the questions is, where did the Flood come from if they originated outside of the galaxy. Well, a theory of mine is that I don't believe some alien other than Forerunner had a Flood infested ship and came into the galaxy. As they show Flood spores as active bacterium, what's to say the Flood spores couldn't just hitch a ride on a asteroid cruising through space and coming into the galaxy? The asteroid crashes somewhere, and you have the Flood out of the bacterium. This is also contradictory-Flood extragalactic in origin, and the Forerunner's first encounter on Threshold (Joe Staten, Art of Halo). Remember back then when everyone freaked out about SARS and whether it might be some kind of alien bacteria or virus from space? So, if the Flood had a homeworld, what would it be like? With my powerful imagination, I'd expect the planet to stink alot. Everything's rotted and gaseous with a sickish yellow-green haze. A dark, foggy, swampy planet overgrown with bogs and Flood biomass while native Flood infection forms roam and glow about in the thousands and millions. How do they eat, I dunno...feed off the planet's swamp vegetation? Cannabalism? Go dormant by colonies so food can be shared? Imagine your Pelican crash landing on the Flood homeworld in a pit of swamp and you now face a guerrilla war of you vs. thousands of Flood spores coming at you at a time. And you have to run, run, run as fast as you can through the muddy swamp until another Pelican gets visual of you. Not much ammo at your disposal other than your full load. Vehicle-I'm thinking between no vehicle and putting a Warthog in with the crashed Pelican so you can have fun plowing through the sea of Flood spores and watch them all pop. Using the turret, you will eventually be overwhelmed if you stay put. Earlier Gravemind forms are here too. Just a ghastly blob of biomass and vegetation, with thousands of burrowed embedded infection forms glowing more than normal.
The Halo 3.com site was endorsed by Bungie so the IRIS campaign must be somewhat canon. The question is never answered that if it's true the Flood came from outside of the galaxy, who, how, what brought them? I do not rule out some spacefaring Forerunner ship exploring deep space, encounter the Flood, brought them back, and all hell broke loose. Maybe if there's a Halo 4 or something to answer it.
And what could cavemen possibly have that the Forerunner took interest in that they might be able to help them fight the Flood? We're talking about cavemen...and a highly advanced race? What could cavemen be of use to the Forerunner? It's not like humans are immune to them. Holy sh--, new thought. Humans might not be immune to Flood, but humans do have immune SYSTEMS (just thought of that from the word 'immune'). That is, immune system against bacterial/viral infection. So if the actual basis of the Flood are bacterium (as shown alot throughout the clips), then humans might have something to be able to resist the Flood (even if they can fall prey physically). Remember that the Flood is not necessarily just dangerous biomass, remember the spores that always alter the atmosphere and creates a yellow haze? 343GS did said once that the Flood begins to alter the atmosphere and that MC was a good planner to have a sealed suit. Perhaps the Flood need not actually infect and that infection can take place just from breathing Flooded air? A parasite does not necessarily 'infect', infection is for the bacteria and viruses.