Well, Escharum is a liar (Canon fodder on Rubicon Protocal)

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So they did a preview for the new book Rubicon Protocal. Little at odds with how things are depicted in Halo Infinite and Escharums is really mischaracterising the battle.

“Witnessing the Banished force firsthand, the sheer number . . . she hadn’t seen anything like this since the end of the Covenant War. Stone wondered what the hell the Banished were doing here. Except for those aboard Infinity, the UNSC’s mission was—or should have been—virtually unknown. They were attempting to unseat Cortana from her place of power and eliminate the oppressive threat of her forces spread throughout the Orion Arm, something that had cost countless lives over the last year. But now a massive Banished fleet hung in the space between them and the ring, and their chances for even surviving this operation, no less completing it, were plummeting dramatically.“

Okay, all you guys who insisted “343 aren’t making the Banished Covenant 2.0, they aren’t the First Order, they don’t just have thousands of ships out nowhere mate”. Well, there you have it. Atriox attacked Zeta Halo with enough ships to be comparable to the Covenant War. Remember these Spartans have seen all the Fleets that Jul had and they’re saying this is even more than that.

Few other things -

  • Still don’t see why the Halo and Guardians can’t deal with a few hundred primitive warships. Forerunner technology and all that. They haven’t deployed the Weapon at all at this point. This chapter mostly talks around this. Maybe it gets addressed but I ain’t holding my breath.

  • Escharum told us this all lasted a few minutes. I’d advise reading the whole scene but that’s a little optimistic.

  • We only see three dreadnoughts in the cutscene. There’s nothing to suggest the Banished are in the numbers implied in this text. Indeed you see a panning shot of empty space. It looks like a small fleet battle. Not a Mass Effect 3 style assault on Zeta Halo.

  • Why is Escharum gloating over the fact he had hundreds, maybe even thousands of ships against the UNSC and its escorts? That’s not worth bragging about and really it’s surprising nobody points this out to him.

“Thanks, Mako. I see it.” And she also saw a way out. Four hundred meters ahead, an enemy dreadnought lay powerless with a gaping hole in its midsection, the victim of a direct hit from Infinity ’s MAC rounds. They’d already accelerated to ninety-five meters per second and gaining. No time to apply the brakes—not that she’d use them anyway. Burning up the single-use brakes now meant they wouldn’t have them later to slow down for landing.

So the Infinity does indeed fire it’s MAC cannon and one shot one of these Dreadnoughts. Again, there’s no suggestion of this in the cutscene.

Again, there’s probably more Banished packed onto one of these vessels than on the Infinity. Why is Escharum gloating if he just outnumbered the Infinity a thousand to one. Indeed it’s implied even in his four minutes he managed to lose a ton of ships and men.

I genuinely do wonder whether parts of the book were edited. That or the author was given a very different take of the battle to what the cutscene department eventually made. The battle described is completely at odds with what’s shown and discussed in Halo Infinite.

Also I suspect there’s going to be a lot of tunnel vision in the book. Like in the chapter they don’t seem too fussed about the ostensibly main mission to destroy Cortana. It’s mentioned but there’s no narrative tension since we all know that will be resolved quickly so we’re being briskly hurried to them fighting Banished because reasons.

Still, I am glad to see the Xenos being killed in copious numbers and whenever I hear Escharum or Atriox brag about this battle; I know he’s a liar now. Pretty sure in game you kill more Bansihed than the Infinity’s crew compliment anyway so….book makes more sense than game.

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This is actually nothing new in halo. The arbiter is repeatedly said to be a brilliant commander, when all his battles shown are generally just brute forcing large (often superior) numbers of technologically superior vessels.

Covenant battle tactics in general seem to be poor, despite having nearly every advantage. Whenever the writers want to portray them as ‘smart’ they just have them send a stealth ship in.

That said, a victory by numbers is still a victory. In the end the banished did catch the most advanced human vessels unawares and seemingly destroyed it. That’s not something for them to not boast about.

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Well the Arbiter didn’t boast about his victories every five minutes like Escharum and the Banished do. He’s the more humble sort. Like I am expecting Atriox to be so full of crap when he comes back.

It’s more the way Escharum describes it and the story frames that as something to be taken at face value. “Understand why we won” as Escharum puts it at the House of Reckoning. This leads the player to assume that the Banished are an elite force that used skill and tactics to defeat the UNSC.

Not that they had a thousand Dreadnoughts against the Infinity. Of course they won in those circumstances. Really, the characters should challenge the villains when they are lying like that.

The UNSC should have vastly more ships than the Banished because one is an interstellar Empire and the other is a terrorist organisation. Especially since humanity still has its homeworld whereas the Banished currently have a memory. The Encyclopaedia really doesn’t provide an explanation for this imbalance between the two militaries. Once the tech gap closes and the Covenant collapsed there’s no real excuse to have this sort of situation. The Banished just come out of nowhere and the UNSC fleet disappears. Okay mate.

Plus it’s just at odds with what we see in Infinite.

I will be getting the audiobook on audible. So hopefully it answers some of the context questions. But I am not holding my breath. For example, bringing Cortana down should be a big deal for the humans and Brutes but I think there’s going to be some tunnel vision as we are swiftly moved on to the business of killing Xenos.

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I guess the book is just adding more substance to some of the events in Halo Infinite, such as the first cutscene. Kind of like Halo: The Flood provided some more insight into the CE events. It’s not really surprising, though. I expected something like this in some form.

Still don’t see why the Halo and Guardians can’t deal with a few hundred primitive warships. Forerunner technology and all that. They haven’t deployed the Weapon at all at this point. This chapter mostly talks around this. Maybe it gets addressed but I ain’t holding my breath.

It’s hard to deal with a few hundred warships if the Infinity was caught off-guard by big warships designed to ram into enemy ships. And they did ram Infinity. There’s only so much the Infinity can do. And at least Infinity put up a bit of a fight before everyone needed to evacuate.

  • We only see three dreadnoughts in the cutscene. There’s nothing to suggest the Banished are in the numbers implied in this text. Indeed you see a panning shot of empty space. It looks like a small fleet battle. Not a Mass Effect 3 style assault on Zeta Halo.

There should’ve definitely been more ships shown in some capacity, as we know that there are 6 Banished dreadnoughts excluding Warship Gbraakon. One is above Master Chief the entire time in the campaign, and 5 others can be seen on different inaccessible shards of the ring in the campaign. Considering the vast scale of the ring, there are almost undoubtedly other dreadnoughts, along with Karve ships which are said to be the backbone of the Banished fleet, and Intrusion Corvettes along with other vessels which are there. Deukalion and Ballas are confirmed to be somewhere on the ring, and they’ve brought their warships named Despoiler and Voidfaith and Writh Kul and Inka 'Saham were on the ring, so there’s little reason why the Dagger of Mercy frigate and the Heresy’s Sorrow corvette wouldn’t be there somewhere. If Orna 'Fulsamee is on the ring, then the Blameless Conceit destroyer would be there too.

I could keep going but the point is that there are plenty of forces and ships that are not seen but are on the ring somewhere. We must consider that it’s very possible the lack of seeing other ships in a cutscene no longer than 2 minutes is because of budget constraint. This was the case with the Halo Wars 2 cutscenes. I believe in a Halo lore Q&A stream that 343 did many years ago basically said that they wanted to put more Banished ships on the Ark with the Enduring Conviction but couldn’t because of the cutscene budget constraints. That is where they confirmed that the Banished has other ships on other installations “near” the Ark and are part of the Enduring Convicitons fleet force.

Still, I am glad to see the Xenos being killed in copious numbers and whenever I hear Escharum or Atriox brag about this battle; I know he’s a liar now. Pretty sure in game you kill more Bansihed than the Infinity’s crew compliment anyway so….book makes more sense than game.

I don’t think Escharum exactly cares. Regardless of the full extent of the matters, the Banished did beat the UNSC on the ring and that’s all he cares about. Even after everything that happened in Infinite’s campaign, the amount of control that the Banished possess across the entire ring is impressive and probably underestimated in scale. You can expect the Banished to have just as much of a presence they did on the map we play on across each of the 5 different shards which has a compliment of a Banished dreadnought with forces, as well as bases of all kinds serving different purposes. And again, their control goes far past just those 5 shards and that’s a fact because of my statement about Despoiler and Voidfaith being on the ring as well as Karves and Intrusion Corvettes which are not seen but are no doubt there on the ring

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Why wouldn’t a single Guardian pulse destroy the Banished Fleet? Every Halo Array also has defensive weapons. It seems like an extremely dumb idea to just Mass Effect 3 style assault a Halo Array. Why couldn’t Cortana just fire the ring? Tactical pulse. Bye bye Atriox.

If budget was the issue that was a colossal mistake on 343 part. You have to establish the scale of the threat. Whenever you discuss the Banished there’s definitely this common perception that they’re just a small time raiding gang. Not this immense military war machine that’s evil. How dare you compare them to the Helghast. That shows poor story telling and that people are filling in blanks with bad assumptions. They only see three ships, Banished must be small fry.

But more to the point. If the Banished were building thousands of ships why weren’t they targeted by the UNSC, Covenant, Arbiter and Created. Clearly a major threat that requires a good Nuking.

There’s also the how. The UNSC is an interstellar government which should have many times more ships than any Covenant splinter faction. Yes, I did mock the whole “we are the giants” thing, but that’s an extreme reaction to it to make the UNSC weaker than a random Brute Chieftains petty Kingdom. Call himself Warmaster all he wants he’s no Horus Lupercal.

It’s not so much that he cares. It’s that it’s not treated as a lie or contested by the characters. He’s our only source of info on this battle. So we are left to assume he’s telling the truth. All it takes is for the Weapon to say he’s an -Yoink!- or for the Pilot to bite back at something he says. But they don’t. So, must be telling the truth. I’d have said that, this just proves the Banished are pathetic and could never win one to one. Entirely relying on the plot just giving them tons of soldiers and ships to win these fights.

Like let’s say Atriox comes back. At which he starts gloating how his masterful strategy defeated the UNSC. You know, bring a thousand ships to the enemies 1. Real tactical genius here. I know 343 are going to put him on a pedestal and aren’t going to point out that he’s a liar and braggart.

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Also, don’t we see a memory of Cortana seeing the Infinity’s arrival? Why does she not notice the Banished fleet that it’s immediately attacked by? They’re already on the rings surface at this point so Battle was still ongoing. If she’s (somehow :roll_eyes:) in that much trouble why not just wander over to the nearest Domain terminal? Really Atriox should be like Nero hacking at the sea with his sword here. She wasn’t immediately locked down by the Weapon at all.

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Except they don’t have them out of nowhere, their introduction in Halo Wars 2 stated that the covenant couldn’t take them at the height of their power. The halo universe is pretty large, The force on the Ark was a small portion of his forces and he was cut off from them after we blew up his only slipspace capable ship. Atriox fights in numbers. For all his cunning he is shown to be both cowardly in that he only attacks in ambushes and decisive in that he uses overwhelming force. We see this in the Red Team Fight, he waited in the dark until they were literally in arms reach and then took them completely off guard. When they retreated what did he do? Have a massive army waiting outside to finish off 3 spartans in a warthog. The fight with master chief? He waited until Chief depleted his ammunition in his assault rifle and was down to a sidearm before approaching from his rear with a gravity hammer.

The UNSC ultimately beat the covenant (albeit it took a civil war within to do it) and he recognized the threat they are. He was smart enough to know that they were going to go after their biggest threat and he laid a trap at her doorstep to knock out two birds with one stone. His fight with Chief was intentional to cripple morale/defeat the one spartan who consistently stalemated the covenant, but he also recognized that Chief in an even fight is too high of a risk which is why he waited for an ideal moment. We only seen about 2 minutes of the conflict so let’s see what the whole novel says. I liked what I read, and I’m hoping to see more tie-ins in the next campaign expansions.

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Chief was nearby. She ain’t about to terminate the one human she cares about.

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Because that sort of military imbalance creates a massive lore problem. In the Covenant War, they never knew where Earth and all of its planets were. The Banished do.

Why bother with this Halo ring when you could just fly over to Earth and glass it? If the UNSC only has a handful of ships then that solves your galactic domination goal.

343 never established the Banished had thousands of ships and they have retroactively been wrote into the story. All of the books talk about the Banished as if they’ve always been there and don’t need an introductions. Why the UNSC didn’t make an effort to find their worlds and nuke them is beyond me but here we are.

Which is why she could have fired the ring before he showed up. The Banished had already been able to land troops on the Ring. Plenty of time to fire a tactical pulse and destroy the Banished fleet. Not to mention Guardians. Forerunner Ships, Prometheans, the rings guns etc etc that should have made mincemeat of a frontal assault.

I don’t think the story is subtly poking holes in Atriox as a character. It repeatedly beats you over the head with how badass he is. He beat the Chief. He beat Red Team. It’s only when you bring extra lore that “oh yeah the writers just kind of gave him a thousand times more ships than the UNSC”. Such a military genius we’ve got here.

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You could argue the banished weren’t after humanity at that point, Atriox’s -Yoink!- match was with the covenant. It wasn’t until humanity’s created wiped out his home after not complying with the new rule that he decided to take humanity apart piece by piece. Humanity only really had 3 or so years post covenant conflict to begin rebuilding and baby-proofing the rings so they couldn’t be used as threats again. The biggest threats were the covenant splinter sects, and pursuing marauders who hadn’t directly attacked humanity was probably a flagged threat but on the backburner. Also consider brute tactics vs elite tactics. Brutes love the hunt, they like chasing down humans and savoring the kill, usually torturing them before eating or killing them. Glassing a whole planet doesn’t fit Atriox’s approach, his home is gone, he personally ‘took out’ the only thing Cortana cared about just to hurt her before he took her out too. Why would he give a quick kill to the human homeworld when he’s hell bent on making those responsible suffer?

A lot of the human ships aren’t in earth’s orbit anymore either, a lot were taken down from the Guardian attack on Sydney. Many are scattered, ONI had contingency plans and I’m sure UNSC had protocols for this scenario too.

Another thing, if you light one ring, it lights all of them. Installation 04b wasn’t ready and was lit above the ark which we know was out of the range of the rings by design. It’s pulse wouldn’t reach the others to start the chain reaction. Zeta Halo IS or was in range of the other installations. One Guardian is present on Zeta and it’s smacked into the map, which is assumed she brought that down on herself when Atriox was trying to kill her, which was after the destruction of the Infinity. I don’t know why she didn’t use it before the Infinity got there, but we also don’t know how long the occupancy was either. The other guardians are policing the galaxy or were. Forerunner ships and guns I can’t speak for, we haven’t seen them on the ring, I vaguely recall some type of vehicles in the ring substructures in the Rion Forge books but it’s been a minute since I read them.

We also should probably consider what ships are being counted as ships by the banished. Their phantom style ships are the equivalent to our pelicans, but do we classify pelicans as ships and do they count their phantoms as ships? Hopefully the books and subsequent campaign expansions clarify what actually happened. The banished saying they stomped our -Yoink!- could just be “the victor writing the history books”. They’re prideful, they have propaganda towers everywhere. They’re unreliable narrators at best.

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In game you have target dossiers describing how the Banished had attacked human colonies and perpetrated massacres. So presumably they were on a hit list but…didn’t do much to smash them up apparently.

Why aren’t our multiplayer Spartans in contact with Earth and still hiding? That insinuates the Banished are still in power and big enough threat to overwhelm the UNSC.

The Encyclopedia spells out that Atriox set out for the Ark before Cortana had appeared. So revenge is a secondary motivation; add to that the target dossier and the Banished were already engaged in genocidal behaviour against humanity. He then becomes obsessed with finding Zeta Halo and the Endless which coincidentally happened to be Cortanas main base. Two birds one stone.

So he’s pragmatic enough not to want to glass Earth but he’s melodramatic enough to want to get a Halo Array to destroy Earth?

I think you can fire them individually. You see this in Halo 3 and Mendicant does this to Maethrillian. Tactical pulse. Cortana could just have done that and killed the Banished fleet.

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I’m rusty on the lore, been doing college since I finished infinite so I haven’t done much looking into the new stuff from campaign and encyclopedia. Does it specify when the raids on human colonies were happening? Could be the Weapon filling in blanks from the 6 month blackout for Chief.

The spartans in multiplayer are still training as we understand it, there’s some like we seen in lone wolves that have been out doing ops, but was this before the cortana blackout or after the banished occupation? We’re a new wave of spartan 4s but there were plenty before us such as seen in 4 and 5. Granted a lot were probably killed during the destruction of Infinity, there were still some who made it out of that ship, and some were also likely stationed/marooned elsewhere.

I don’t really get the genocidal motivation against humanity if it’s not revenge then, If anything you would think he would be in favor of them joining his ranks since they too were against the covenant. We know some sects allowed humans into their ranks such as keepers of the one freedom who were then absorbed into the banished, but even then it was really only to exploit the humans abilities to interact with forerunner tech.

As for 3, that’s installation 04b that was fired individually and it wasn’t in range of the others or finished, that was the point of firing it so that it would kill the flood in it’s vicinity so it was probably only powerful to really destroy itself and it’s immediate area around it as far as range is concerned. Again with Mendicant doing it as a tactical pulse there’s no telling how far out that pulse would reach, nor if the infinity was in that range for Cortana to safely light it.

I’ll be the first to tell you I don’t know. We need more lore between what happened in that 6 month period and hopefully this book will tell us. Also his time on the ark kind of made him look stupid, SoF and crew pulled a halo ring out of it’s foundry in no time at all and he seemed completely surprised and pissed.

This class ends in two days, I’ve got a lot of lore to refresh on before the new book drops next month. This is good food for thought though. Good on you for bringing all of this up.

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Reserving judgement until I read the whole thing as quite often these things are better contextualised more widely

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I thought you were talking about the Infinity not being able to destroy hundreds of warships. Must’ve misread. I get what you’re trying to say on that note

The Banished wasn’t targeted by the UNSC because they were way too busy dealing with a more front-facing and larger enemy in the Covenant. The Covenant was also more focused on the UNSC than anything. They did try and send assassins after Atriox like Chieftain Minas, if you remember from the Sacrifice short story but he ended up being convinced to join instead. Primarily, though, Atriox was able to grow fairly quickly while still being under the radar for the most part. The Covenant’s reach may have been quite large but for example, sending in 100 people to hunt down one specific individual rat within the radius of an entire country isn’t exactly easy.

The Banished aren’t pathetic at all. They’re doing what they have to do to win and seize control of Zeta Halo. The UNSC would’ve done the exact same thing if they had the numbers and capability to do so in that instance. There’s no reason why they’d send in minimal forces if they could help it. They’re trying to win, not prove to the enemy they can tactically defeat them with less resources and manpower. War isn’t about fair and honorable fights. It’s about who wins in the end and if it’s so important to either side, they will do anything and everything to achieve victory.

If the plot armor card is being applied to the Banished, there are more than enough instances where the UNSC have plot armor to insane degrees in far more cases that allowed them to skim by. Take Halo Wars 2 for example. The Spirit of Fire stood absolutely no chance against even something as simple as a bunch of Banished banshees bombarding them. from the Enduring Conviction. Captain Cutter even admits that they may not even be able to last a few more minutes against them. If we remove plot armor from this, the Enduring Conviction would’ve been able to utilize their torpedoes and silos which would’ve shredded the Spirit of Fire even quicker and they wouldn’t even have to send Banshees which don’t do as much damage and can be shot down. The only reason why this wasn’t happening was because of plot armor. The Spirit of Fire would’ve stood no chance in a direct naval battle with the Enduring Conviction. The Spirit of Fire were entirely relying on the plot just giving them the weakest naval engagement which bought them enough time to infiltrate the ship and have countless sentinels do something they weren’t capable of on their own, which was destroying the Enduring Conviction.

Perhaps these instances in the Banished boasting about their how their great strategies won them the war aren’t the best first examples given that we have very little to go off of when talking about the full history of these individuals such as Atriox and Escharum and their tactical feats and historic accomplishments. Regardless about this certain spotlighted instance, it by no means actually means that they are incompetent just because they’re gloating about having a numbers advantage. There’s plenty instances stated by 343 themselves how both Atriox and Escharum are tactically sound and competent. Now, have they shown that in the most brilliant ways? No. Does it mean that it doesn’t actually exist? Also no.

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Because the UNSC is an interstellar civilisation whereas the Banished is a petty kingdom carved out by some random Brute Warlord with a mace.

The UNSC should have far more ships, industrial capacity, better technology, logistics and man power. Instead the inverse is being depicted where the Banished have thousands of capital ships and are suddenly occupying the galaxy if we take the Season 2 Intel at face value.

The Banished should be vastly weaker than the Covenant. Without faith to hold together the species of the former Covenant, any alliance should be brittle, fractious and weak… Any Elite should violently be opposed to Atriox and see any Elite who joins a Brute as a traitor.

Why are the Elites, Grunts and Jackals not deserting the Banished as they keep losing and getting wiped out by humanity? For mercenaries they’re being very loyal to this loser who isn’t even alive at the start of Halo Infinite.

I don’t buy any of it. 343 clearly latched on to the “popularity” of the Banished from that poor sale game series they cancelled. So they’ve made them a much bigger deal than they have any right being in the story. Red Covenant. But even then they can’t manage basic show don’t tell. All Atriox has done is demonstrate that he uses Brute force to win all his fights. Skill and tactics have never come into it.

Plus it’s really offensive that the Banished keep talking about their anger and their grievances; over and over. Like if we’re going to talk about revenge Escharum, why don’t we talk about how you animals destroyed Reach? How you massacred civilians on world after world? How you dashed the skulls of the innocent on the pavement and ate their flesh? 343 kind of forgot about all that. Its humanity’s revenge the Brutes should concern themselves with and well you have just all got yourselves on this Ring with Doomguy.

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343 needed villains of their own, so they did away with the old baddies and conjured up some make believe super powers from out of nowhere. It’s just easy, boring writing, that’s all. The trilogy story made by 343 isn’t a bad idea, it was just written(and executed) very poorly.

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Yeah I just find it really weird and I don’t get the impression they’re subtly satirising the faction or anything like that. But they genuinely think they’re making Atriox this badass leading this epic army. As if he’s Thanos or Horus.

But he’s not:

  1. He’s literally just a Brute Chieftain whose fighting style is brute force. Nothing new. Nothing special. Why is it impressive that he beats an unarmed Spartan? Try doing that to any Brute Chieftain in game and see what happens. I am not going to have just a pistol so why should the Chief? He hasn’t shown any intelligence or charisma in his actions. When he does talk as with Cortana it’s like Angron from the Heresy. I just don’t get setting him on a pedestal.

  2. Consider this, these big ten foot aliens first introduction was massacring unarmed civilians. To me that just shows how pathetic they are. They have to be needlessly cruel out of some sadistic desire. But they could never win a fair fight and like a kid burning ants kill anything weaker than them. They’re bullies and when the Chief starts killing them; they pretty rapidly roll up.

  3. They’ve actually lost every battle they’re in. The Ark, one obsolete UNSC carrier destroys an Assault Carrier and thousands of times it’s own numbers. Zeta Halo, the Chief single handedly kills thousands of Banished soldiers including their mega elite and commanders. They couldn’t protect their homeworld which got destroyed. So really, they haven’t actually won anything and their campaigns have only succeeded in getting hundreds of thousands of their warriors killed; plus losing their homeworld. This victory Escharum screeches at you for the whole game is, what, the Infinity dropped into a Banished fleet of a few thousand? Oh, and you think that’s a great victory do you? I am trembling.

  4. We beat the Flood and Didact. Atriox and his Banished are nothing compared to that. It’s really silly with 343 trying to hammer the Banished into a role that makes no sense. Now I might be wrong. Maybe his is a fool who is about to open the Ark of the Covenant and get burned; but that would be a U turn on what they seem to want from him thus far.

The trope they’re going for just doesn’t work with a Covenant splinter faction. Those factions have always been a secondary antagonist to the real enemy and greater mysteries of the Galaxy. Yes we do have the Endless but the emphasis on the Banished is far more than it ever was on the Covenant in Halo CE.

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Because they were doing sneaky guerilla warfare against the Covenant, you’ll know this if you read the Phoenix Logs. During the time of the Covenant the Banished were tiny. The Phoenix Logs state “So he’s not just stealing armaments, he’s recruiting. At the moment he’s still using guerrilla tactics, which means he’s still small time.”

You don’t understand Atriox’s character if you think him wanting revenge on entire species makes sense. When Elites killed a bunch of Brutes on his ship, he said that getting revenge was petty. The whole point of the Banished is to hire all species. Banished humans are a thing.

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It’s not genocide if there are humans in the Banished who are allowed to live. They still continue to work for the Banished.

The Banished also pillage and slaughter Covenant facilities and Brute settlements too.

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Just because they have a few thousand collaborators and traitors doesn’t mean they aren’t committing genocide on humanity. At that point those humans are criminals and complicit with the crimes of the Banished.

And? That just means they’re more evil if they kill their own and shows they have no principles or morality.

I am not fussed whether Atriox is having his brutes massacre millions of innocents and burn cities is “just business” or if it’s some kind of religious thing.

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That’s an opinion in the logs, militaries around the world do guerilla warfare. It’s not uncommon and the US does it a lot. The Spartans entire existence is based around guerilla operations being a “scalpel instead of a blunt instrument” and what not.

I pointed out that humans being in the banished, but even then it’s a reluctant deal and the majority were the ones included in the keepers of the one freedom when they were absorbed. His intentions are always just going to be get power anyway possible, and we don’t know exactly what he wants with the endless or the silent auditorium. Hiring all species isn’t the point of the banished, it’s about acquiring power through all means with no more religion or ideals interfering. Dude’s not that interesting, he was just a suicide soldier with plot armor who kept not dying and he just got upsetty spaghetti and started his own private army.

Then again, I don’t really care for the Arbiter that much right now, dude actually has killed billions of humans and he hasn’t even said oopsies or anything. So much for an honorable species.