First-Light-Weaves-Living-Song (Earth-4001)

"Each one of these souls is finite and precious
 * And I'm close.
 * Close to saving them all."

- The Librarian

First-Light-Weaves-Living-Song, better known as the Librarian, was a highly influential Forerunner Lifeshaper and the head of the Lifeworker rate for ten thousand years. She was married to the Didact, the Promethean supreme commander of the Forerunner military. During the Forerunner-Flood war, she led the Conservation Measure, which sought to index all species in the galaxy and transport them to the Ark and other conservation facilities before the Flood could reach them or the Halo rings were fired. Frequently clashing with her husband over the morality of the Array, the Librarian died at the end of the war when the rings were activated, willingly stranding herself on Earth within range of the Halo effect. She viewed the human species as having special significance and is responsible for grooming humanity to be the Forerunners' successors.

History
The history of the Librarian is the same as her mainstream counterpart up until the end of the Human-Covenant War in March 2553.

Personality & Traits
The Librarian was an elusive figure of immense intellect and knowledge, her true motives and goals often incomprehensible to others. She had an expert understanding the passage of what the Forerunners called Living Time, the progression of history and the streams of individual and collective fates therein. This enabled her extraordinary abilities of foresight, allowing her to make complex plans for countless millennia to come. Despite caring for life in general, she did not have qualms about sacrificing individual lives or manipulating the course of an entire species if it served a greater purpose. This mentality was most prominently demonstrated by her approval of the firing of the Halo Array; despite causing the deaths of untold billions, the Librarian, despite having initially opposed the Halos in a similar manner to her husband, eventually came to see it as necessary to stop the Flood, which would have ultimately assimilated all life.

While the Librarian greatly valued and cherished all life, she also understood better than most that life is at its core competition and struggle, and that all civilizations are ultimately most concerned with their own interests. Despite this, she had become disillusioned with the Forerunners due to their many failures and the degradation of their once noble ideals. She was well aware long beforehand that these factors, as well as the Forerunners' refusal to admit them, would eventually lead to their end. This was the primary cause of the schism between her and her husband, the Didact: in stark contrast to the Librarian's views, the Didact was staunchly committed to the Forerunners' survival, and eventually, their absolute dominance at any cost.

She held particularly deep respect for humanity, whom she viewed as "special" among all of the sentient life she had seen, and felt that it was well worth the sacrifice of her own life to save them. This was due to the belief among Forerunners that humans were also molded in a similar manner to the Forerunners by the Precursors, as well as her own view that humanity had proved themselves more worthy of the Mantle than the Forerunners.

The Didact noted the Librarian to have a sense of humor unusual in Forerunners, which is why he suspected she had arranged such a complex plan to bring him out of his Cryptum and have two humans and a Manipular assist him in his quest. Due to her love for all forms of life, she also favored various dangerous predators, particularly merse which she raised in the gardens of her and the Didact's home. The Didact never understood her fascination with the creatures. Despite her ultimately benevolent aims, she also took a significant amount of pride in her work, and often presented herself as essentially a goddess to primitive civilizations, most notably humanity. In her own view, she did this because she wished to be remembered, seeing her own existence as fragile in comparison to the humans whom she intended to take the Forerunners' place in the future.

Trivia

 * The Librarian was first mentioned in Halo 3 in the Terminals. In her messages, she is identified as "L".
 * As with most Forerunner names, terms and phrases, "Librarian" would not have been her actual title, but is merely the closest analogue to the meaning of the original word. The Forerunner records of her transmissions utilize translation software so advanced that it incorporates idioms from the reader's own experience; these words appear in brackets in the Halo 3 terminals.
 * The Librarian referred to the part of Earth she resided on as "Eden". This is a reference to the Garden of Eden in Abrahamic religions.
 * The proto-Gravemind was originally called "The Librarian."