The Flood in Star Trek

[The Arbiter]

In this Rumble, High Charity with the Gravemind on board appear in whatever quadrant Voyager was dumped in. Unlike normal Rumbles, these forces do NOT have a standard working knowledge of one another. They need to learn it on the go. No near Omnipotent entities are allowed to interfere. All species and races are "in character"

Scenario 1: The Flood have to work their way across the galaxy and destroy the Federation specifically.

Scenario 2: The Flood must conquer EVERY non cosmic threat in the galaxy. Federation gets an intimate knowledge of their capabilities this time.

I like Trek, but I'm the first to admit I'm pretty casual when it comes to their feats and potential. I hope this isn't a stomp one way or the other.

EDIT: No time travel! I was hoping to keep this battle "conventional"

[The Chou Lives]

Halo is pretty low tier as far as s I finuniverses go. I think Trek can do it.

[Guy Smiley]

So, Scenario 1 is... maybe a possibility. If the Flood is directed intelligently, and engages in reconnaisance practices to avoid running smack-dab into a species that runs rampant right over them, they can probably make it to Federation space in time. After that, they have to spread their infection quickly, and more importantly, without symptoms. Give the Federation a few days and a competent engineer, and they'll devise a way to purge the Flood virus via transporter beam or something. This also assumes that someone in the future with an investment in the Federation doesn't decide to break the Temporal Prime Directive and snuff the Flood right at the point they're dropped into play.

Scenario 2 is not good for the Flood. Star Trek is just full of weird species and creatures that wouldn't be susceptible to the Flood. See: The Crystalline Entity, the Giant Space Amoeba, various space cloud organisms, Armos, 'God', V-Ger, Silver Blood, Medusans, Horta, Wesley's Nanite species, and almost certainly things who were already cellularly mutable, used high-end-nanotech, or both like the Changelings, the Borg, and Species 8472. Worse, the Borg at the very least have their own time travel capacity, and would quite happily use it to ensure that any assimilation happened under their own terms.

And after all that, we're not even counting the high-end species in Trek. (Mostly since we haven't seen them.) Below the various energy beings, Q, and wormhole entities that count as cosmics, and above the nastier extant species like the Borg, there's a pretty big gap that we've only seen filled by precursor-style aliens like the Iconians, the guys who make the Planet Killer in the TOS, and the 'ancient humanoid' species that seeded the galaxy with their pattern and thus being the reason so many Star Trek species are humans with rubber foreheads. Something like that could be hiding out in the parts of the galaxy the Federation hadn't explored yet, and should be quite capable of dealing with The Flood. (Admittedly, they probably aren't due to the lack of galaxy-spanning empires, but Picard did encounter at least one species capable of casually mindwiping the Enterprise and IIRC posing a credible threat to the Federation, but were highly xenophobic and didn't want to leave their planet unless provoked by other species poking their noses in where they weren't welcome.)

[The Arbiter]

Gah! I really intended to have time travel banned as an option. I really did lol. Hoping for a more conventional war I've edited the OP. Ill write a rebuttal and ask some questions tonight when I have more time

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

So, Scenario 1 is... maybe a possibility. If the Flood is directed intelligently, and engages in reconnaisance practices to avoid running smack-dab into a species that runs rampant right over them, they can probably make it to Federation space in time. After that, they have to spread their infection quickly, and more importantly, without symptoms. Give the Federation a few days and a competent engineer, and they'll devise a way to purge the Flood virus via transporter beam or something. This also assumes that someone in the future with an investment in the Federation doesn't decide to break the Temporal Prime Directive and snuff the Flood right at the point they're dropped into play.

Problem with this theory is that it'd only work against the 'Feral' stage of a Flood infestation. Once a Gravemind develops it's basically a highly-intelligent parasitic species that can absorb the knowledge of those 'consumed' into the Gravemind. They're also capable of tactics, up to an including using civilian ships to bypass orbital defenses during the Flood-Forerunner War, and tricking Humans into thinking they'd devised a cure, by choosing to not infect them.

Bear in mind that the Humans/Forerunner/Precursor (the original Flood was itself, a species that had been corrupted by its own hatred) that the original Flood contended with was capable of creating planets, creating a multi-galaxy spanning network of information (that could be accessed mentally and fed information directly into your central nervous system), deploying 'stellar collapse' as a combat tactic, indexing the the galaxy's fauna and preserving it in the event of galactic genocide (which was ultimately self-inflicted to stop the Flood by killing the Food source. The Flood just went to sleep).

So I see this scenario working for a few reasons. The Flood can remain dormant for 100,000 years without much trouble, and unless the first species they contact is incapable of space travel, outright immune, or just bombs the planet/ship they show up on, the Flood have an in, and a few hundred infections later, there's a Gravemind on the field. From there it's straight on to "too intelligent to deal with without understanding what you're dealing with". I don't see this as being surefire, of course. But they have maybe a 10-50% success rate depending on how it starts.

Scenario 2 is not good for the Flood. Star Trek is just full of weird species and creatures that wouldn't be susceptible to the Flood. See: The Crystalline Entity, the Giant Space Amoeba, various space cloud organisms, Armos, 'God', V-Ger, Silver Blood, Medusans, Horta, Wesley's Nanite species, and almost certainly things who were already cellularly mutable, used high-end-nanotech, or both like the Changelings, the Borg, and Species 8472. Worse, the Borg at the very least have their own time travel capacity, and would quite happily use it to ensure that any assimilation happened under their own terms.

They likely lose this scenario 1000% of the time, yes. Full knowledge of what its capable of means that they'll know that it's not an infection, but actually a race of gene-altering space communists (they're basically a working form of communism, everything for the betterment of the glorious Flood motherland, and everyone is equal/gets the same thing. Only issue is that their end-goal is the death of everything in the known universe), and that trying to cure the infection isn't going to work. Though the bolded wouldn't be ... much of an issue, as the Flood is able to already do that to the Forerunner, and can infect things like The Hunters, which are hive-minds of thousands of little slug-things.

And after all that, we're not even counting the high-end species in Trek. (Mostly since we haven't seen them.) Below the various energy beings, Q, and wormhole entities that count as cosmics, and above the nastier extant species like the Borg, there's a pretty big gap that we've only seen filled by precursor-style aliens like the Iconians, the guys who make the Planet Killer in the TOS, and the 'ancient humanoid' species that seeded the galaxy with their pattern and thus being the reason so many Star Trek species are humans with rubber foreheads. Something like that could be hiding out in the parts of the galaxy the Federation hadn't explored yet, and should be quite capable of dealing with The Flood. (Admittedly, they probably aren't due to the lack of galaxy-spanning empires, but Picard did encounter at least one species capable of casually mindwiping the Enterprise and IIRC posing a credible threat to the Federation, but were highly xenophobic and didn't want to leave their planet unless provoked by other species poking their noses in where they weren't welcome.)

The Forerunner and their forebears the Precursor did much the same, even going so far as to create a quasi-sentient "net" that was woven throughout multiple galaxies (see: The Domain). It's what Cortana taps into at the end of Halo 4 in order to 'survive'. The Forerunner also indexed all of the known species and then had their tech automatically "re-seed" planets suitable for said species, in order to prevent a full-on genocide when they resorted to ... full-on genocide, to stop the Flood (by which I mean, they were ultimately, only able to kill the Flood's food source, ie, everything that was sentient and not 'the flood' already). No time-travel, yet ... but ancient Halo races were basically your typical highly advanced space races. Humans included (there was a culling at the hands of the Forerunner where all of the ancient human info was lost, which is why your normal Halo human is ... your normal Halo human).

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Gah! I really intended to have time travel banned as an option. I really did lol. Hoping for a more conventional war I've edited the OP. Ill write a rebuttal and ask some questions tonight when I have more time

Give the Forerunner time to form a Gravemind, and it becomes one hell of an amusing war.

[The Arbiter]

Halo is pretty low tier as far as s I finuniverses go. I think Trek can do it.

*tries and fails to not get triggered*
Lol joking of course. Yeah the covenant and unsc during Halo 1 -3 are not overly impressive compared to other sci fi. But Forerunner era Haloverse was a beast.

So, Scenario 1 is... maybe a possibility. If the Flood is directed intelligently, and engages in reconnaisance practices to avoid running smack-dab into a species that runs rampant right over them, they can probably make it to Federation space in time. After that, they have to spread their infection quickly, and more importantly, without symptoms. Give the Federation a few days and a competent engineer, and they'll devise a way to purge the Flood virus via transporter beam or something.

They can spread plenty quickly. According to the H3 Terminals on the Ark, they converted like 98% of a planets population in less than an day. The number of infected was in the multi billions.

Fun fact also in regards to the "symptoms" thing you mentioned: The Flood don't NEED to convert you into a shambling grotesque Combat Form. They can keep your original shape and personality intact like they did when they showed The Lord of Admirals speaking to the Librarian. Sort of like Carpenters "the thing".

Can't cure the Flood infection. Its not a virus, parasite, fungus, bacteria or nanite like other things they may have encountered. The Flood Supercell convinces your body to become flood, through and through. Its not living amongst your cells, it IS your cells. To beam out the Flood would mean beaming out the persons whole body, hence killing them. And if the Flood gets a few of these Engineers, then their technobabble prowess and ingenuity gets added to their collective intellect.

Scenario 2 is not good for the Flood. Star Trek is just full of weird species and creatures that wouldn't be susceptible to the Flood. See: The Crystalline Entity, the Giant Space Amoeba, various space cloud organisms, Armos, 'God', V-Ger, Silver Blood, Medusans, Horta, Wesley's Nanite species, and almost certainly things who were already cellularly mutable, used high-end-nanotech, or both like the Changelings, the Borg, and Species 8472.

The Flood have extensive experience in infecting and corrupting creatures who have mutagenic, mutable cell structures etc.

The Forerunners were masters at this stuff. Each individual Forerunner citizen was capable of inducing self mutation and undergoing varied and custom transformations and "pubertys" for lack of a better term to rewrite their genome and alter their genetics. The original Didact even planted his own Genome into a different caste of Forerunner, and by the time the transformation finished, had essentially cloned himself via the process, right down to memories and personality. The Forerunners were also capable of implanting millenia long genetic sleeper instructions into the races of lesser beings (Geas) to the point where they could tangibly alter that species motivations and destiny. The also have the feat of taking Ancient Humans and de-evolving them from a near Forerunner race to simple Neanderthals. They can also convert organic matter and thought into digital information and AI (The Composer) yet also innoculate themselves from this process.

The Flood infected these guys in the billions, despite dedicating AI and lifeshapers to the cause of vaccine for nearly 300 years. Ancient (and modern) San Shyuum or Prophets as they are better known, can also alter life to the point of creating sentient moving plants and trees. They got swallowed up all the same as well.

Now, the Flood can't infect living gas or crystals lol but I am assuming these things are rare? Could they not target the majority of softer squishy species then just simply attack these things in a conventional way?

And after all that, we're not even counting the high-end species in Trek. (Mostly since we haven't seen them.)

Kind of hard to use them in a Rumble then

We haven't even gotten into talking about how Trek would deal with the Logic Plague. The Borg would be an easy target for an established Gravemind with a few converted planets at his disposal for processing power. The Vulcan culture as well seems an easy target as well as any high or low end AI or software. Once they Logic Plague the Borg, things get much more complicated for the other races.

(which was ultimately self-inflicted to stop the Flood by killing the Food source. The Flood just went to sleep).

(by which I mean, they were ultimately, only able to kill the Flood's food source, ie, everything that was sentient and not 'the flood' already).

Huh? The Halo array killed The Flood just fine. Otherwise they would have been dormant all over the place, not just on the Halos.

Give the Forerunner time to form a Gravemind, and it becomes one hell of an amusing war.

The Flood are already at Gravemind level as stated in the OP =)

[The Arbiter]

I know I banned Q, but just as a thought, would they be susceptible to the Logic Plague? They could snap their fingers and wipe out the Flood, but they haven't done that to the Borg, and generally come across as a mix of bored or playful. They may strike up a conversation with the gravemind.

Q are presented as nigh omnipotent when it comes to raw universe altering power, but omniscient? Eeeehhhhh. Quinn said his IQ was 2005, which is impressive but nothing to Gravemind or contender class AI. He has also appeared genuinely flummoxed before and has been tricked or outsmarted by Picard and Janeway right?

[Cyke]

I know I banned Q, but just as a thought, would they be susceptible to the Logic Plague? They could snap their fingers and wipe out the Flood, but they haven't done that to the Borg, and generally come across as a mix of bored or playful. They may strike up a conversation with the gravemind.

They haven't wiped out the Borg the same reason why they never (at least as far as I know) wiped out any other species to extinction, on screen or mentioned in canon. The Borg are just another race in the grand scheme of things.

But also, yeah, the Q are not omniscient. Lord knows our heroes have surprised them on more than one occasion, but primarily just because of wit and compassion rather than actual facts and knowledge.

[The Arbiter]

They haven't wiped out the Borg the same reason why they never (at least as far as I know) wiped out any other species to extinction, on screen or mentioned in canon. The Borg are just another race in the grand scheme of things.

But also, yeah, the Q are not omniscient. Lord knows our heroes have surprised them on more than one occasion, but primarily just because of wit and compassion rather than actual facts and knowledge.

So they are unlikely to just wipe the Flood for no reason then? Good to know.

Do you feel they are presented as a race capable of being persuaded by argumentation or possibly out thought by the lesser races? At least in a 1 on 1 sit down?

[Cyke]

Do you feel they are presented as a race capable of being persuaded by argumentation or possibly out thought by the lesser races? At least in a 1 on 1 sit down?

Tbh, I always saw our heroes surprising the Q much in the same way a human can be surprised by a little puppy. Obviously the human knows far more than the pupper but it doesn't mean that they can anticipate *everything* that the cutie-patootie will do.

The last episode of TNG was pretty much Q trying to get Picard to even begin to start thinking like them -- trying to teach one man to be open to endless possibilities would open up a whole new realm of exploration for humanity.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Huh? The Halo array killed The Flood just fine. Otherwise they would have been dormant all over the place, not just on the Halos.

Without a food source, a fair bit of the Flood starved to death. Unlike their original form, they couldn't just return to a desiccated powder form. While the initial firing excised the immediate threat, the ones on the installation, were either indexed or in stasis. Or, as it's shown in Halo Wars, on a Shield World/out of the firing range of the Array.

The Covenant fucked quite a bit up when they released the Flood on Installation 04. Doesn't help that Guilty Spark had slowly gone insane over the course of one hundred-thousand years.

But, yknow. Johnson exists.

The Flood are already at Gravemind level as stated in the OP =)

Well they do far better in Scenario 1. Talking 80-100%.

[Dalak]

The Flood have extensive experience in infecting and corrupting creatures who have mutagenic, mutable cell structures etc.

The Forerunners were masters at this stuff. Each individual Forerunner citizen was capable of inducing self mutation and undergoing varied and custom transformations and "pubertys" for lack of a better term to rewrite their genome and alter their genetics. The original Didact even planted his own Genome into a different caste of Forerunner, and by the time the transformation finished, had essentially cloned himself via the process, right down to memories and personality. The Forerunners were also capable of implanting millenia long genetic sleeper instructions into the races of lesser beings (Geas) to the point where they could tangibly alter that species motivations and destiny. The also have the feat of taking Ancient Humans and de-evolving them from a near Forerunner race to simple Neanderthals. They can also convert organic matter and thought into digital information and AI (The Composer) yet also innoculate themselves from this process.

The Flood infected these guys in the billions, despite dedicating AI and lifeshapers to the cause of vaccine for nearly 300 years. Ancient (and modern) San Shyuum or Prophets as they are better known, can also alter life to the point of creating sentient moving plants and trees. They got swallowed up all the same as well.

Now, the Flood can't infect living gas or crystals lol but I am assuming these things are rare? Could they not target the majority of softer squishy species then just simply attack these things in a conventional way?

As long as they have the original DNA or an untainted Transporter pattern on-file they can reset any modifications done by the Flood. They've done it to reset people twice in TNG, when the 2nd Season Doc got 'Old' and when several people got 'young' in season 6 or 7. It will literally rewrite every cell in their body back to a previous state, so all they have to do is start keeping better records and figure out a way to spot the manipulation happening.

As I don't know Halo at all I'm not going to get into how this will affect their war effort or whatever a 'Gravemind' is, but I can mention they can undo stuff like this as well as the ability to use their transporters to just beam people/things into storage for a while (First Scotty for Decades, now it's how they beam up masses of people in emergencies, and to escape detection in Voyager).

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

A Gravemind is just the result of the Flood attaining a certain amount of mass. Basically, they're largely uncoordinated relying largely on pheromones to coordinate anything... Until they get to 100ish bodies converted. Then a Gravemind forms, and you're dealing with an entity that can direct/control all Flood bodies under its influence. It also gains intelligence equal to the individual converted. So by the time you're into the thousands, you've got a species capable as intelligent/more intelligent than what was originally absorbed.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

As far as reversing the Flood conversion? Unlikely.

The Forerunner were capable of doing the same thing, and they couldn't stop it, and they had thousands of years to figure it out.

EDIT: basically, by the time the Forerunners figured out that curing and reversing it wasn't an option; they had to resort to wiping out all sentient life in the galaxy