The Story:


The Hierarchs had hidden many secrets. The darkest and most unpleasant.

But the most mysterious and powerful among the Hierarchs, were the three High Prophets. The High Prophets of Truth, Mercy and Sorrow. But their actions have become stranger and more incomprehensible every century. Rumours that the Prophets didn't care about the Covenant became more and more popular.

The Sangheili had been discovered by the ancient Forerunners a hundred thousand years ago. But during the Rebirth, after the destruction of the horrific Flood virus and the Forerunners themselves by the Halos, their genome was severely altered by a series of random mutations, possibly started and made by the Forerunners.
Recent studies by Covenant scientists and medics have shown that these mutations have severely altered Sangheili’s analogue of human myostatin, a muscle growth hormone.

These changes hit hardest hundreds of generations later, or, hundreds of years after the Covenant was created jointly by the Sangheili and San'shayuum in 852 BC.
These changes in the Sangheili genome made them more powerful. Muscle fibres became much stronger, on par with bone and meat. The gigantic, 2,5 meters tall, aliens were now true walking tanks.
This only strengthened the Sangheili's position, making them the strongest and most loyal race of warriors within the Covenant.
By the year 2400, absolutely all Sangheili, warriors and civilians alike, were true bipedal behemoths whose strength was unconscious.

But centuries later, the trust of the Covenant's two major races began to falter. Separatists called the Swords of Sanghelios still existed almost from the very moment the Covenant was formed. But even they were merely the foundation for the incipient distrust of the Prophets. Many questions from the Sangheili about the Halos and their true purpose heightened the Prophets' suspicions, followed by questions about the brutal suppression of the Unggoy Rebellion and their retention in the Covenant, and culminated in rumours that the Prophets were thinking of handing over the title of most loyal members of the Covenant to the Jiralhanai who had literally only just joined. The truth of the rumours was questionable, but even their very existence made the Sangheili wonder about the true intentions of the High Prophets.
They questioned the faith of those with whom the Covenant itself had been founded, who had been their Hand of Justice, their Sword and Shield, who had shed blood and died by the millions for their words ?

Because of this, more and more Elites began to support and believe in the Swords of Sangheilos. When scraps of information about the Halos were extracted and deciphered from some of the ancient artefacts of the Forerunners that had been secretly studied away from the eyes of the Prophets, those who read them were horrified.

The Halos were a weapon of mass destruction of life in the WHOLE Galaxy, not an instrument of Ascension to the Gods.

This discovery turned the entire worldview of the Sanheili upside down. The thousands of years of trust and co-construction of the Covenant, the "Great Journey", the promises of the High Prophets ... it was all the LIE.


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Co-op project written by me and illustrated by Awesome  Sam1377

My HUGE thanks to  Sam1377 for awesome 3D arts of "BuffLites" and BIG thanks to  TheRavic for correction of the text.