Knowing (Earth-5875)

"I am the Knowing. I observe and record. I observe and collate. A people vital and alive and thriving once... And now ages gone. They are what you could become...and what the attackers desires to be. What else do you wish to know?"

- - The Knowing to Romeo and Dutch

The Knowing, known as the Silent Oracle to the Covenant, was an ancient and massive forerunner Metarch who operated in a tunnel complex beneath the human colony Ariel.

History
The Knowing was created by the Builders before the engineering of the Halo Array, on what would become the human colony Ariel. Its functions consisted of observing, studying, recording and archiving all available information for the Ecumene, with the intent of sharing it to humans, if they ever found it. The Metarch was similar to the Caretaker of the Cold Storage, on Installation 05. On January 18th, 2552, during the Battle of Ariel, Kojo "Romeo" Agu and Taylor "Dutch" Miles, two Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, found the Knowing underground of Ariel after they accidentally crash-landed a stolen Type-52 Phantom in a hideout with hundreds of surviving colonists whom the Covenant were using to die in search of forerunner traps.

After they entered the chamber where the Knowing resided, the Metarch acknowledged the humans' primacy, answering all queries they presented to it. After they learned that the Covenant could use the knowledge of the Knowing to destroy humanity, the ODSTs told the Metarch to self-destruct before the Covenant could get its hands on him. After it did so, the explosion killed several warriors, including the Seeker, a san'shyuum who was leading the excavation. The surviving Covenant troops left the planet after their objective was destroyed, not even bothering to glass the planet.