Work Page: First Saints

Section One: Quirel

The following is copied and updated from a conversation with Dovahkiin from Spacebattles: The Covenant didn't have to be formed. The peace talks could have failed, and one race would exterminate the other, if the destruction wasn't completely mutual. Or the Prophets could have fled into the galaxy, and perhaps when they meet the Sangheili again, there would be peace. But probably not.

A union between the two races is not the only option, but it is the moral one. But what kind of union? How do they co-exist? How can the old grievances be laid to rest? Can the religion of the Prophets and the religions of the Elites be reconciled with each other, or exist side by side?

The peace talks were large, with thousands of participants. Sangheili scholars, warriors, captains of industry and speakers for great nations were present to argue the case, and so were a smaller number of Prophets. The disparity was great, but could not have been any other way. The whole of the Sangheili population was greater in number and divided into many factions. The Prophets were fewer and mostly united in allegiance. This did not work in the Prophet's favor, for they soon learned that playing one Elite faction off another quickly united them all against the Prophets. Furthermore, the more control that the senior Prophets exerted over their juniors, the more rebellious those youngsters became. The elder's claim to legitimacy had been weakened to the breaking point by the war.

As the negotiations raged on, small groups coalesced around a foundation of mutual respect, and then united with each other over common philosophical principles. These seventy delegates, the First Saints of the Covenant and Accords, hammered out a compromise. More than a compromise, it was a path forward, a vision.

The Sangheili had been defeated in the War of Beginnings. Though they fought the Prophets to a standstill, the Sangheili had to betray their deeply held beliefs about the sancticity of Forerunner artefacts. They broke apart the immortal engines and built weapons to break the Prophets. Even though it worked, even though it was necessary, the shame was felt by all. For peace to endure, the Prophets must suffer defeat in kind. And so, the Prophets took a hammer and chisel to their own religion and cut away whatever was not fit to remain.

The religion of the Prophets at that time was the faith of a doomsday cult with the refinement of a few centuries. Their simple, greedy faith drove their ancestors to hide within the Keyship, and then to take off and doom the rest of their race to environmental collapse. That first generation left behind all of the histories and philosophy developed by seven thousand years of San Shyuum civilization, and so their children had to start from scratch. Their teachings were full of self-aggrandizing superstition meant to distort and justify what they had done. Power struggles among the leadership produced decrees and bylaws meant to consolidate or subvert power, such that none of the commoners could obey one without violating another. They thought themselves to be nascent gods in a universe full of creatures barely capable of reason. It is no wonder that they went to war with the Sangheili.

At this point, you are probably wondering why I'm investing so much thought into a fictional religion and background material. The reason is that the Covenant faith and the societies it spawned is going to be very important to Not All Who Wander. At some point, I am going to introduce a Covenant cleric who will have to work alongside Human characters. The conflicts with them and the search for truth are going to be big parts of her character. The other reason is that Broken Circle really did piss me off that much.

Led by the prophet Cor Laih'dhu, the First Saints reviewed the doctrines of the San Shyuum with a critical eye. Within a month, they published a call for reform and a return to scripture based upon hard evidence. The old guard resisted, of course, but they were pressed by reformers on one side and skeptical Sangheili clergy on the other, who demanded proof for this teaching and that. Where did the Prophets get the idea that the three Heirarchs had dominion over all Forerunner artefacts? Where did the Prophets learn that all life was seeded by the Forerunner, but San Shyuum alone were shaped by them?

Working from archeological references and data mined from Forerunner Artefacts, the First Saints settled on three broad facts: that the Forerunner civilization struggled for a long time against internal corruption and decay as well as a great external foe, that a way to transcend the physical world and live as gods was found and undertaken by the Forerunner, and that this path is still open for others to walk.

This was revolutionary. This destroyed more of the Prophet religion than even the reformers were willing to part with, but it left a strong philosophical foundation for a religion. More importantly, it was the point where the belief in the Great Journey turned from an insular religion to an evangelical one that could perpetuate itself for over 3,500 years. I can't understate how important this is to the existence of the Covenant. Religion either spreads by conversion or by the sword, or it doesn't spread at all. Conversion by the sword isn't possible at this point. The whole notion is fucking idiotic. The Sangheili just fought the Prophets to a standstill, and the only reason they haven't wiped out the Prophets is the keyship. If the Prophets converted the Sangheili by the sword and then parked the keyship and dismantled the weapons, they would be dead within the week. Oh, look, I'm ranting about Broken Circle again.

Anyway, the belief in the Great Journey has to spread by evangelism. I think it won over the Sangheili because the evidence for that Great Journey, as fragmented as it was, existed in the Keyship. There was a record of what the Halo Array does, a technical brief that the San Shyuum honestly misinterpreted as a description of transcendence into the divine beyond. The Sangheili could review this evidence for themselves, check its authenticity, and see that it was genuine. Furthermore, many of the Sangheili religions already upheld the Forerunner as creator-gods. They could be pantheistic, or essentially monotheistic, and they often had other trappings like asceticism or ancestor worship, but the Forerunner were always present. Doubt had slowly built up over the centuries as the Sangheili spread from Sanghelios and found more artefacts, but no sign of an extant Forerunner civilization. If they were gods, where did they go? Now the Sangheili had an answer.

Part Two: Tacit Axiom's Reply

This is good, though the H2A terminals (and Mythos, IIRC) showed that the San'Shyuum did try to convert the Sangheili into their religion first, only for the Sangheili to behead the ambassadors, which implies the religion wasn't totally exclusive and was, indeed, an evangelical one from the start. I also do like this version because it makes the Sangheili look like the unreasonable party for once, rather than them always being the noble and honorabru warriors who never do anything wrong except when manipulated by the mustache-twirling evil Prophets.

Mind you, I wouldn't say all Sangheili would've been as extreme; the incident (or maybe couple of incidents) with the San'Shyuum would've been merely representative of some predominant cultural groups that the San'Shyuum just happened to come across first, perhaps the equivalent of an angry mob of medieval peasants.

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I've also thought about the Covenant religion a fair bit. A question I've been considering is what are the universally agreed-upon (and centrally enforced) dogmas of the Covenant religion? Let's look at Christianity. There are numerous denominations and offshoots, but all (all that are regarded as Christian anyway) agree to the basics - the Holy Trinity, that Jesus is the son of God who rose from the dead for mankind's salvation, and so on. The differences between denominations can sometimes get incredibly minute, on top of churches that split simply for political reasons (e.g. the Church of England).

But the Covenant is much more vast, and more ancient than any human religion. And while the Covenant had their key teachers and prophets, their religion wasn't strongly embodied in any key individual like for example Jesus, Muhammed or Buddha. That, too, will likely mean more variety and more disputes. We do in fact see that variety in canon; the prevailing doctrines of the 23rd Age of Doubt with their alternate path to the Great Journey (what I call the Long Path vs. the Swift Path) or fringe sects like the Governors of Contrition are a clear indication of that. Ideas of the Great Journey and godhood were flexible, and likely changed with time.

I'd say what is universally accepted is that the Forerunners are gods, and that through the Great Journey any of the younger species can join them in their divine transcendence, and in doing so escape the ever-turning grinding mill of the universe, which shall consume all at the end of time. Escape would make them god.

The juxtaposition of good and evil in the more esoteric levels of Covenant mysticism is equally one between order and chaos. Fittingly, the Great Journey represents order, because it is seen as a means to preserve the complexity and uniqueness of information in the face of inevitable entropy. The Parasite - the Great Enemy - represents that very entropy and is thus the antithesis of divinity. A future predominated by the Enemy is one in which no uniqueness survives, and all is merely endless grayness.

This - the preservation of pattern information against universal entropy - was one of the more fruitful results of the melding of the Reformist and Sangheili faiths - with the idea of transcendence taken from the San'Shyuum and that of divine individuality from the Sangheili - for it provided a very real and tangible goal to strive towards even for the secular philosophers and technocrats of the space age, who were not otherwise wooed by vague promises of transcendence.

Even so, the exact nature of that divinity or transcendence were never fixed. In some Ages, it was even in question whether apotheosis could be achieved through Forerunner technology alone, or any technology. Some radical mystics of old even proposed the idea of the Great Journey as a process of spiritual enlightenment, though such ideas tended to be regarded as going too far, and quickly branded as heresy- the kind where one committed the sin of solipsism, seeking godhead from their own self without the essential instruments of the divine. It was the ultimate hubris, and indeed blasphemous, to attempt to recreate the Path the Forerunners had undertaken without the blessings of their relics. This did not, however, stop the idea from coming up from time to time, for it was not a huge leap from the core teachings of Covenant dogma when distilled to its basest essentials - salvation through technology.

But in general, beyond the basic universal dogmas, it was not in the best interests of the High Council to interfere in the specifics forms of worship on individual worlds or even domains. It hardly mattered to them whether this cluster or that subscribed to a pluralistic or unitary view of the godhead, or what specific gods they emphasized. What truly mattered was the amount of power those regional churches held within their respective domains and over their parishes, and their eagerness to defer to High Charity's decrees.

What the Ecclesiarchy was efficient at, with some exceptions, was in unifying - and thus keeping the peace - between the countless different denominations of the Path. With the fall of High Charity, many domains have fallen into infighting due to the sudden absence of that spiritual nucleus or its instruments of compliance.

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Also, it should be emphasized that it took a lot of time to codify the base tenets of the Covenant religion. The early days of Christianity were basically centuries of ecclesiastical councils debating on this or that (often minute) article of faith, or the canonicity of given religious texts.

To the Covenant, this period took over a thousand years, and in some ways, continued throughout its existence. There were Doctrinal Councils assembled every Age, with Great Councils gathered to answer to major events, such as the discovery of new species or reliquaries with civilization-wide implications both religious and strategic (e.g. Zhoist).

However, when it came to data, toward the later years of the Covenant as a civilization, it was not uncommon for inconvenient information to be ignored in the name of preserving the Covenant's integrity. Existing mythos surrounding the Forerunners' final days also provided a convenient explanation for such cases: it was known that the Great Enemy was devious, and, with the help of turned Anathematic Intelligences, could corrupt even Forerunner databanks to deceive the faithful. Hence, great care had to be taken in the categorization of Forerunner scripture into the realms of the Canonical, Deuterocanonical, Non-canonical or even Forbidden.

For example, for much of their history, the Covenant mistakenly conflated the narrative of Mendicant Bias' creation - and its subsequent betrayal - with that of the Gravemind and the Flood, resulting in a general belief in some traditions that the Flood itself was a Forerunner creation. This belief had largely been phased out by the later centuries of the Covenant, as the nature of the Flood as a separate entity that had corrupted Mendicant Bias became clearer. However, some sects such as the Governors of Contrition (as well as the larger tradition they were part of) continued to hold the belief that the Flood, too, was a Forerunner creation, and in the absence of real evidence to the contrary, the Ecclesiarchy did not altogether curb such beliefs.

Tangent: The Caste System

Also, the idea of a species-based caste system had no foundation in the original articles of faith codified by the First Saints. The Covenant began as an ostensibly equal union between two species, and the promise of the Great Journey asserted that all would walk the Path side by side. While the existence of other species was acknowledged as a reality due to archaeological or otherwise indirect evidence discovered by both the San'Shyuum and Sangheili, coming across an extant one was not a certainty; and so the practical implications of incorporating new species into the union were not thought of very far at the start. The current caste system came about somewhere around the discovery of the Yanme'e and was further refined more or less to its current form by the time the Unggoy were incorporated.

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On a related note, I'm not even sure if I'd like the idea of the Hierarch triumvirate to have been a fixed thing since the dawn of the Covenant. What if they just had one Hierarch at a time in the beginning, only for their numbers to increase as this was found to concentrate too much power on a single individual? After a few tries of up to seven Hierarchs, three was settled on as just the right balance.

Part Three: Quirel

I figured that the last crew of the Keyship would be venerated by the Covenant. Their record of the last cataclysmic battles against the Flood, as well as the bridge crew’s debate over the morality of using the Halo Array, are the keystone of the Covenant’s cosmology. These records were imperfectly preserved and imperfectly translated by the San’Shyuum, but the myth of the Great Journey ultimately traces back to those documents.

I think this should also be the basis for three Hierarchs. There’s three of them because because there are three stations on the Keyship’s bridge, and three crew members feature prominently in the dialogues. There have been more than three Hierarchs at a time, and fewer than three as well, but these administrations were exceptions to the rule, mandated by external circumstances.

The emphasis of each Hierarch’s duties has shifted over time. Whereas one or two posts could have easily been sinecure positions in the early years of the Covenant Empire, bureaucratic bloat forced each role to take on more and more administrative duties.

The First Saints who authored the Writ of Union also serve as central figures, though some have not withstood the test of time. Their writings have been replaced by commentaries or recantations, but overall those documents form a core philosophical, legal, and theological framework for the Covenant. They are so influential that just about all iterations of the Covenant faith are reactions to or extrapolations of their teachings.

The First Saints also fit nicely into a list of archetypes, such that many parables told by the Covenant are in the form of conversations or debates between the different Saints.

Tangent: The Caste System

I would say that the beginnings of a species-based caste system existed in the Writ of Union: even though the San’Shyuum and the Sangheili were supposed to integrate as equals, there was a clear division of labor between the two on High Charity’s mission. Even though there were Sangheili clerics and theologians, the San’Shyuum were given that role on High Charity. Even though there were San’Shyuum warriors and armorers, and they continued to exist as a distinct group for centuries, that role was given to the Sangheili within and without High Charity. And as that mobile station rose to prominence and ultimately commanded the Holy Ecumune, that caste system became more real.

In their writings, the First Saints also gave considerable thought toward a division of labor between the species. It was noted early on that the San’Shyuum were frailer than the Sangheili, and their command of languages was not nearly so nimble. In fact, the average Sangheili could become fluent in the San’Shyuum language in a tenth of the time it took the average San’Shyuum to learn one of the Sangheili tongues. Simple principles of meritocracy, some feared, would see the San’Shyuum excluded from many walks of life.

The Covenant didn’t start out with a caste system, but the seeds were planted, and bloomed during the incorporation of the Yanme’e.

Part Four: Tacit Axiom

Random thought: Do the Covenant have a bible? Numerous scriptures and commentaries and such no doubt exist, but is there a single holy book that's universal and above all others? Even if there was one, is it known and read by the average Covenant citizen or is it mostly confined to the clergy and upper classes, perhaps available in its fullness only in the liturgical tongue? Maybe there would be only abridged translations available for the lower castes and such, or secondary books associated with certain castes or professions.

Part Five: Quirel

For a bible, I was going to use a collection of historical and philosophical texts compiled by the First Saints, the authors of the Writ of Union. Some texts did not hold up to the test of time, and were removed over the years. The rest contained enough wisdom to remain applicable, and only needed minor updating to explain the cultural context behind some cryptic references.