At story timeline 2557~2558, they both relied on supplies obtained by various means to carry out their activities and both had some production capability, some of Jul’s equipment is thought to have been produced by craftsmen within the fleet rather than by the original builders. The Banished seem to be able to build some ships.We are not sure about Jul, but at least he has a stockpile of old ships and there are several large shups on both sides, so it is hard for me to decide which side will win.What do you think?
The Banished I think would win over Juls covenant. Reasons being various. Jul is blinded by his cult beliefs and subject to the same leadership issues the original covenant had. The banished are freed from their religious fervor and structure themselves in a uniquely brute manner. Though they do have some issues with leadership, usually stemming from glory hungry pack leaders. But ultimately they are fairly well armed and organized. Also in one of the recent books it also shows that to a degree they are willing to recruit from humans. Though they have a natural distrust of humans after several betrayals. That willingness could give them an edge in a all out war with covenant forces. It might even show if they really needed to they would form alliances with other factions, like maybe the arbiter and his elites. Something Jul would not do.
2 Likes
Jul was an atheist who only pretended to believe in the Forerunners’ divinity. He did this because most of his followers were true believers.
1 Like
was he? I do not remember that being mentioned anywhere. Was that in one of the books that was set between halo 4 and 5?
IIRC, he spent a while on Onyx learning of the Forerunners and their tech, in the second Kilo-5 book.
I think he was definitely sus to the Great Journey BS by the time we see him in Spartan Ops, but for the sake of keeping his forces inline, he had to pander to their beliefs.
I miss Jul.
3 Likes
that is interesting. I still think that even if he does not personally have as extreme beliefs the fact that the majority of his forces do still poses a problem. It kind of makes his leadership shaky. If they get wise to any heresy of apostacy they might seek to take him out.
1 Like
No contest really, atriox was fighting the real covenant for years and winning.
The storm remnant faction was but a flea in comparison.
Absolutely.
I think that’s where they were taking his story in Escalation. Sali Nyon (i’ve probably misspelt that) was a prominent figure rising in his forces that would have eventually sought to overthrow him.
I think it would have been great to see a POV from his perspective following Spartan Ops, that dealt with his struggles in keeping his forces on track, while hiding his true intentions.
2 Likes
This is a copied text from a reddit comment I had made on the same subject:
Let’s take a look at their respective fleets:
Juls Covenant:
2 CAS class Assault Carriers
at least 4 CCS class Battlecruisers
at least 2 RCS Armored Cruisers
at least 16 CRS Lightcruisers
at least more than one Brigantine
at least more than one Carrack
at least more than six to seven Blockaderunners
Hesduros also belongs to Juls Covenant. There’s a factory located on Hesduros producing both equipment and ships (including Blockaderunners) for Juls forces, so he can recover from a military blow like losing three Blockaderunners and their embarked in a fight.
Banished:
At least one CAS class Assault Carrier
At least one CCS class Battlecruiser (probably around five)
At least one SDV class heavy Corvette
unknown number of smaller attack ships of varying sizes.
The Banished seem to make a lot of use of ground based bases to produce equipment, although we don’t know if they own a factory capable of building Blockaderunner sized ships. The Banished can at least recover from smaller blows like losing a legions worth of troops and equipment.
We sadly have a lot less info of the Banished fleet
than we have of Juls fleet.
If it’s just firepower Juls fleet completely out guns the Banished flotilla.
The Banished relied mostly on stealing/raiding stuff. While this was successful against the original Covenant, I think it will be a lot less useful against Juls Covenant. Juls Covenant is a always moving fleet, and you are very unlikely to catch one of his ships on its own. Add to that that Juls Covenant is very familiar with raiding runs (they used their Lightcruisers in that way for at least three to four years while waiting outside of Requiem, probably even longer than that), meaning they are probably just as good in preventing being raided themselves, and in predicting someone elses hit and run attack.
The Banished do have one advantage, they have a better leader. Jul’ Mdama was a opportunist who just wanted to secure/protect his kind after finding out what ONI was doing to the Sangheili. He thought he could secure the Sangheilis survival by exterminating humanity, but that just ended up with the Infinity destroying everything he had build up. He also was a shipmaster in the Covenant days, but the fact that we don’t know much about his Covenant past suggests that he wasn’t the glorious nor the bad kind of shipmaster.
Atriox has seen a lot of battle, he’s also very good in manipulating people and like Jul he is also opportunistic, although unlike him he plays the long game. While the loss of the Enduring Conviction was a blow, it wasn’t Atrioxs responsibility, it was Lets responsibility, and he was the one that failed to keep it safe. The Banished concists out of multiple groups all trying to gain wealth, get Atrioxs attention or trying to use the Banished for their own goals. Many Jiralhanae on Doisac also look up to the Banished and Atriox, so the Banished do have quite a lot of potential followers.
Ultimately I would say Juls Covenant wins 6/10 times. There’s a reason why his Covenant quickly was seen as a serious thread in the post war era while the Banished were only seen as a noticable annoyance at best…
2 Likes
I think that the Banished keep themselves an annoyance. its clear from halo wars 2 and recent books that they are capable and numerous, able to have multiple operations going on through out the galaxy.
I think another issue in judging the banished is they are relatively new and were largely confined to halo wars 2 and a few books. During which Cortona was rampaging.
1 Like