Why hate Kilo-Five when you should look at Ghost

Community Halo Universe
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I read all these forums Hating on Karren Traviss’s Kilo-Five Trilogy for how she portrayed the Elites shattered to all hell and Humanity on the up and up. But your blaming the wrong person for this. The person who pretty much ruined the Elite Empire is the author of Ghost of Oynx.

“But how?” you ask. I’ll tell you. Look to Star Wars

At the End of Halo 2. You see practically all the elite council dead. So most of the Elite’s top leadership We’re wiped out in a single act. But that is halo 2, what about ghost of Oynx? I’ll tell you when there. So in Star wars terms. The death of the Elite Council is Equal to that as the death Emporer Palpatine to the Galactic Empire.

Now to Ghost of Oynx. With the News of the great schism and the death of the Council spreading across the Elite Empire. The One Elite shipmaster who could unite the Remaining Elites summons many of the Elite’s last leaders to his fortress world to devise plans to strike at the Brutes and the humans. With so many leaders in one place, one of the largest fleets the elites has ever gathered floats above the planet. Then Bam. The Nova Bomb for “First Strike” Goes off, splitting the planet in half, wiping out the fleet and Killing any Elite Leadership that could hold the Elite covenant together.

So in Star wars terms, the Galactic Empire Just lost the Last Grand Admiral they had, the largest fleet they had, and Coruscant all in one go. So what did the remaining Imperials do when this happened, they all went warlord and turned on each other and try to build their own empires.

And that is exactly what the Elites did. Same with the brutes, who went back to nuking themselves back to the stone age or joining up with elite warlord factions. So when Karren Traviss was handed the Universe of halo. The Covenant were ruined by the actions in ghost of Oynx, a shadow of its former self. Just like when the rebel alliance won the battle of coruscant from the empire. Yes if the Galactic empire reunited, they could’ve crushed the rebel alliance Easy. But they were to busy building their own empires. And that is what is same situation the Covenant is.

Then the UNSC got the Infinity. A ship that can easily take on a whole fleet by itself. So at the moment, Humanity is actually at a very good place. And Kilo-Five is assigned to keep humanity there for as long as possible while humanity caught it’s breath.

So you all hate the Kilo-Five Trilogy for how weak it portrayed the Covenant. When it was the actions in Ghost of oynx that caused them to become so weak. If none of you caught this. I highly suggest you all reread the ghost of oynx and then read the star wars X-wing series and the Thrawn Trilogy. Then you’ll finally understand what is really going on.

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The elite you speak of is Xytan 'Jar Wattinree he is not dead and was not utilized in any of karen traviss books. :tongue:

kilo 5 books are terrible because they ignore, cut out or vilify the character and characterization of the book(s) it is meant to be a sequel to ignoring a lot of the source material and initial character development.

if there was no continuity to halo and these books stood alone they would be fine. as it stand they are hugely inconsistent.

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> 2533274830366691;2:
> The elite you speak of is Xytan 'Jar Wattinree he is not dead and was not utilized in any of karen traviss books. :tongue:
>
> kilo 5 books are terrible because they ignore, cut out or vilify the character and characterization of the book(s) it is meant to be a sequel to ignoring a lot of the source material and initial character development.
>
> if there was no continuity to halo and these books stood alone they would be fine. as it stand they are hugely inconsistent.

Xytan is dead http://www.halopedia.org/Xytan_'Jar_Wattinree#cite_note-ENC-1
Though I do not have the encyclopedia, that link shows that it is confirmed he is dead. Although, I wish it were not like this…

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> > 2533274830366691;2:
> > The elite you speak of is Xytan 'Jar Wattinree he is not dead and was not utilized in any of karen traviss books. :tongue:
> >
> > kilo 5 books are terrible because they ignore, cut out or vilify the character and characterization of the book(s) it is meant to be a sequel to ignoring a lot of the source material and initial character development.
> >
> > if there was no continuity to halo and these books stood alone they would be fine. as it stand they are hugely inconsistent.
>
>
> Xytan is dead http://www.halopedia.org/Xytan_'Jar_Wattinree#cite_note-ENC-1
> Though I do not have the encyclopedia, that link shows that it is confirmed he is dead. Although, I wish it were not like this…

brushed my copy off… you are very much correct. rest still stands

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Idk. I didn’t find it in consistent. Brought a more Human element to how wrong halsey was morally and how wrong chief Mendez was for going along with it. I found it a real fun read.

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But the statement was to when I kept hearing, “The covenant should’ve been strong enough to wipe out humanity Still”

And this is to basically to say, if they banded together, then yes. But after Halo 3, with most the leadership gone or missing. The Covenant are to devided to be any effective.

And people so forget that in halo 3, you saw the whole of the Arbiter’s fleet in that space battle over the Ark and fighting a 1 to 3 disadvantage fight. Most of his ships got wiped. Then his main ship was heavily damaged to and in vast need of repairs when debris form high charity hit it. So him being besieged like he was made a lot of sense sense he is an actual small player for most elites still see him as shamed

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> 2533274803137071;5:
> Idk. I didn’t find it in consistent. Brought a more Human element to how wrong halsey was morally and how wrong chief Mendez was for going along with it. I found it a real fun read.

  • glasslands implied that Halsey threatened someone with her personal sidearm when hijacking the Beatrice, an incident which CPO Mendez uses grounds for confiscating her pistol. Halo: First Strike describes the event in question, and no threats are involved when Halsey boards the vessel (which is empty and unguarded) and leaves unopposed. Additionally, Mendez refers to the incident as if he had been present, even though he did not have first-hand knowledge that Halsey had stolen a ship; him knowing about the event would be based on Blue Team’s, or Halsey’s own accounts. Mendez was also not aware of Halsey’s ulterior motives for bringing the Spartans to Onyx, as she had divulged that information only to Kurt Ambrose in private shortly before the group entered the shield world, casting Mendez’s paranoia about her in a questionable light. Furthermore, Mendez treats the incident as if Halsey had stolen a friendly vessel, though Beatrice was in fact the personal ship of Governor Jacob Jiles, an Insurrectionist leader. Most damningly, Admiral Parangosky lists the theft of Beatrice as one of the warcrime charges brought against Dr. Halsey following the latter’s arrest on Trevelyan.
  • According to Halo: Glasslands, Dr. Halsey did not have an AI to help her decipher Forerunner symbols while in the shield world. However, she had the “micro” AI Jerrod in her laptop in Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, helping her translate Forerunner symbols while they traversed the interior of Onyx. No mention was made of Halsey losing Jerrod, and she still has her laptop after she and the other survivors had entered the shield world.
  • During an argument with Dr. Halsey, CPO Mendez claims that the SPARTAN-III program lacked any form of genetic filtering. In Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, Mendez is personally present at a meeting where it is established that the SPARTAN-III program did indeed have a set of genetic qualifications, a necessity because the biochemical augmentations at the time were only compatible with a particular series of genetic markers, and any deviations would carry a significantly increased risk of failure. For this reason, the initial pool of candidates for Beta Company had to be reduced from the original projection of nearly one thousand to 375. While he may have lied, this is suspect in light of his argument being based on the alleged lack of genetic screening making the SPARTAN-III project more morally sound than the previous program due to the latter’s perceived elitist overtones because of its strict genetic criteria (disregarding that the screening was in place not only for the sake of the augmentations but also to ensure that the candidates would be fit both physically and psychologically to acclimatize to the harsh military life imposed upon them).
  • The Sangheili repeatedly refer to Fleet Admiral Hood as “Shipmaster of Shipmasters”. While not strictly a contradiction, it is somewhat out of character for the Sangheili to insist on using such an epithet. Hood’s rank would draw more natural comparisons to the actual Sangheili ranks of Supreme Commander or Imperial Admiral rather than a neologism contrived from the lesser rank of Shipmaster.
  • ONI recordings described in Mortal Dictata also show the SPARTAN-II children exhibiting more extreme reactions to their abduction than Dr. Halsey’s observations in her journal let on. However, descriptions in Halo: The Fall of Reach are more in line with the journal’s suggestion of the children being mostly calm and compliant, as it is established that their ability to cope with the intense psychological strain involved with the program was one of the criteria for their selection. The comic adaptation Halo: Fall of Reach - Boot Camp corroborates this in an added scene in which Halsey and Déjà observe that none of the children are crying during their first days in the program.
  • Mortal Dictata also claims that the Spartan children were based deep underground in CASTLE Base in the first three days of the program, even though Halo: The Fall of Reach describes them being relocated to a barracks on the planet surface in the Reach FLEETCOM Military Complex immediately after their induction (though they did train at CASTLE later on in their training). As stated in The Fall of Reach, the first days’ extreme physical training and education sessions were arranged specifically to prevent the children from having time to think about their predicament, yet the nature of the sessions described in Mortal Dictata allows the latter scenario to occur. The three days in CASTLE base could also not have occurred prior to Halsey’s introduction to the program, as the children had only recently been awakened from cryo-sleep at the time and were only informed of their new purpose during Halsey’s induction session. The military-oriented focus, intense pace and ruthlessness of the initial training are also nowhere to be seen in Mortal Dictata’s descriptions, which suggest a comparatively leisurely acclimation period.
    i could keep going!

back on topic parts of the community felt strongly that it seemed ridiculous for humanity to recover so quickly to the point that a UNSC had vessel capable of sitting cloaked with Nukes hot aimed at the elite home world. little to no info on refugees or the billions displaced by the glassing of colonies or economic mayhem that would follow. humanity was put on a pedestal with no negatives from the aftermath of the human convenient war. the feeling that humanity won by the skin of its teeth was erased with the kilo 5 books.

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It wasn’t Eric Nylund who insisted that the Elites lacked the capabilities to keep their ships fixed and instead used Brutes to do it (despite the fact they needed Drones and Engineers to fix their own ships but whatever). It wasn’t Eric Nylund who insisted that the Elites kept a sizable number of Brutes on Sanghelios even after the Great Schism. It wasn’t Eric Nylund who showed that while the Brutes slaughtered numerous Elites, continued to steal ships in Sanghelios orbit and were one of the first groups to blame for an attack on a Sangheili farm, they just could not foresee a Brute rebellion happening.

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> 2533274830366691;7:
> > 2533274803137071;5:
> > Idk. I didn’t find it in consistent. Brought a more Human element to how wrong halsey was morally and how wrong chief Mendez was for going along with it. I found it a real fun read.
>
>
> - glasslands implied that Halsey threatened someone with her personal sidearm when hijacking the Beatrice, an incident which CPO Mendez uses grounds for confiscating her pistol. Halo: First Strike describes the event in question, and no threats are involved when Halsey boards the vessel (which is empty and unguarded) and leaves unopposed. Additionally, Mendez refers to the incident as if he had been present, even though he did not have first-hand knowledge that Halsey had stolen a ship; him knowing about the event would be based on Blue Team’s, or Halsey’s own accounts. Mendez was also not aware of Halsey’s ulterior motives for bringing the Spartans to Onyx, as she had divulged that information only to Kurt Ambrose in private shortly before the group entered the shield world, casting Mendez’s paranoia about her in a questionable light. Furthermore, Mendez treats the incident as if Halsey had stolen a friendly vessel, though Beatrice was in fact the personal ship of Governor Jacob Jiles, an Insurrectionist leader. Most damningly, Admiral Parangosky lists the theft of Beatrice as one of the warcrime charges brought against Dr. Halsey following the latter’s arrest on Trevelyan.
> - According to Halo: Glasslands, Dr. Halsey did not have an AI to help her decipher Forerunner symbols while in the shield world. However, she had the “micro” AI Jerrod in her laptop in Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, helping her translate Forerunner symbols while they traversed the interior of Onyx. No mention was made of Halsey losing Jerrod, and she still has her laptop after she and the other survivors had entered the shield world.
> - During an argument with Dr. Halsey, CPO Mendez claims that the SPARTAN-III program lacked any form of genetic filtering. In Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, Mendez is personally present at a meeting where it is established that the SPARTAN-III program did indeed have a set of genetic qualifications, a necessity because the biochemical augmentations at the time were only compatible with a particular series of genetic markers, and any deviations would carry a significantly increased risk of failure. For this reason, the initial pool of candidates for Beta Company had to be reduced from the original projection of nearly one thousand to 375. While he may have lied, this is suspect in light of his argument being based on the alleged lack of genetic screening making the SPARTAN-III project more morally sound than the previous program due to the latter’s perceived elitist overtones because of its strict genetic criteria (disregarding that the screening was in place not only for the sake of the augmentations but also to ensure that the candidates would be fit both physically and psychologically to acclimatize to the harsh military life imposed upon them).
> - The Sangheili repeatedly refer to Fleet Admiral Hood as “Shipmaster of Shipmasters”. While not strictly a contradiction, it is somewhat out of character for the Sangheili to insist on using such an epithet. Hood’s rank would draw more natural comparisons to the actual Sangheili ranks of Supreme Commander or Imperial Admiral rather than a neologism contrived from the lesser rank of Shipmaster.
> - ONI recordings described in Mortal Dictata also show the SPARTAN-II children exhibiting more extreme reactions to their abduction than Dr. Halsey’s observations in her journal let on. However, descriptions in Halo: The Fall of Reach are more in line with the journal’s suggestion of the children being mostly calm and compliant, as it is established that their ability to cope with the intense psychological strain involved with the program was one of the criteria for their selection. The comic adaptation Halo: Fall of Reach - Boot Camp corroborates this in an added scene in which Halsey and Déjà observe that none of the children are crying during their first days in the program.
> - Mortal Dictata also claims that the Spartan children were based deep underground in CASTLE Base in the first three days of the program, even though Halo: The Fall of Reach describes them being relocated to a barracks on the planet surface in the Reach FLEETCOM Military Complex immediately after their induction (though they did train at CASTLE later on in their training). As stated in The Fall of Reach, the first days’ extreme physical training and education sessions were arranged specifically to prevent the children from having time to think about their predicament, yet the nature of the sessions described in Mortal Dictata allows the latter scenario to occur. The three days in CASTLE base could also not have occurred prior to Halsey’s introduction to the program, as the children had only recently been awakened from cryo-sleep at the time and were only informed of their new purpose during Halsey’s induction session. The military-oriented focus, intense pace and ruthlessness of the initial training are also nowhere to be seen in Mortal Dictata’s descriptions, which suggest a comparatively leisurely acclimation period.
> i could keep going!
>
> back on topic parts of the community felt strongly that it seemed ridiculous for humanity to recover so quickly to the point that a UNSC had vessel capable of sitting cloaked with Nukes hot aimed at the elite home world. little to no info on refugees or the billions displaced by the glassing of colonies or economic mayhem that would follow. humanity was put on a pedestal with no negatives from the aftermath of the human convenient war. the feeling that humanity won by the skin of its teeth was erased with the kilo 5 books.

Didn’t Traviss also admit she never researched the series prior to writing on top of all that?

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> 2533274850869596;9:
> Didn’t Traviss also admit she never researched the series prior to writing on top of all that?

That is what she routinely does in order to avoid biases on her end. remembers her Save Carmine t-shirt at a Gears of War panel and that she wrote Gears 3.

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> 2533274803137071;1:
> At the End of Halo 2. You see practically all the elite council dead. So most of the Elite’s top leadership We’re wiped out in a single act. But that is halo 2, what about ghost of Oynx? I’ll tell you when there. So in Star wars terms. The death of the Elite Council is Equal to that as the death Emporer Palpatine to the Galactic Empire.

I don’t know much about Star Wars, but I did some reading on that. Palpatine and Vader’s deaths were apparently such colossal blows for Imperial Governance because it wasn’t held together by a proper respect for the position of Emperor, institutional authority, policy or order. It was held together because those two were intimidating Sith Lords who used the Dark Side to control the Imperial Senate and strike the fear of god into people. It doesn’t suggest to me that there would be an effective system in place that could select a successor or keep the Empire together if that was the position’s main grip on power.

The Sangheili High Councillors didn’t have powers like that, nor did the Heirarchs, yet Sangheili space stayed together somehow. So the Sangheili’s society was far more stable than the Galactic Empire in that it existed probably because the Sangheili largely deferred to the authority of the post holders, the policies and institutions of their own governance. There was a respect for order, and a clear system for the replacement of leaders that did not involve civil war. The framework was strong enough on its own, in other words. In Star Wars, rulers stayed in line because they were frightened of Palpatine; the Sangheili stayed in line because they respected the social order that they were a part of and actually had an effective form of governance. Hence if they were killed, I would expect their swift replacement via whatever governmental framework has held the Sangheili together for more than 3000 years…

So the Sangheili High Council being wiped out shouldn’t have lead to the total and farcical breakdown of all form of order and organisation across Sangheili space literally overnight. Even in Star Wars the Empire existed for years after Palpatine’s death before it finally packed in. Several governments today have contingencies in place in the event that their top executives are all killed. The situation presented in Kilo-5 is that a strategically orientated military culture as intelligent as the Sangheili didn’t think of that. Oh diddums.

Also, why would there be difficulty in managing things like food distribution, or colonial governance, just because the legislative body of the Covenant was killed? Even assuming that all four typical branches of government were all in the High Council (Executive, legislature, judicial and military), there should have been hundreds of sub-councils overseeing delegated matters (Because 200 people can’t run a galactic empire by passing every issue over their desks) that basically just took over. If the High Councillors are all killed, then the organisations they control would just elect replacements. I don’t see why organisations responsible for food distribution suddenly stop working because the Minister/CEO/High Councillor is killed.

I can totally get how the Covenant would disintegrate along species based lines, but I can’t really understand how species themselves break up. It seems to me that the authors have put no thought into the how the Covenant’s political system might have worked. Species as different as the Covenant couldn’t all be run by one central authority that dictated powers over everything, workload issues aside for now. Different species would have to have their own governance systems underneath the Covenant super-organisation with devolved powers. Why? Well just ask yourself how you could possibly govern Brutes and Drones with the same policies given that their cultures and psychologies are so radically different: One is a pack based patriarchal society, the other is a matriarchal Hive system. Brute Chieftains and Drone Queens would have to have power to rule over their own worlds, powers given by the Covenant High Council, which means that there would have to be some form of co-coordinating organisations and institutions to administrate those powers. So in the absence of the High Council, the species break away from each other, no longer tied together through the Covenant, but any governments they had would still function.

It wouldn’t be a clean separation and wouldn’t be without disastrous consequences to the species’ societies as they all shared a common military and probably all shared a common economy, or a set of economies all closely dependant on one another that wouldn’t react well to the Covenant disappearing. It might have been closer to the hypothetical situation of the European Union packing in. You still have countries even if the union evaporates. I don’t see it leading to France, Germany, Italy, UK, etc all entering into periods of civil war.

> With so many leaders in one place, one of the largest fleets the elites has ever gathered floats above the planet. Then Bam. The Nova Bomb for “First Strike” Goes off, splitting the planet in half, wiping out the fleet and Killing any Elite Leadership that could hold the Elite covenant together.

I don’t believe it was actually stated that this was a collection of the Sangheili’s only existing leaders, much less all of their potential replacements too.

> So in Star wars terms, the Galactic Empire Just lost the Last Grand Admiral they had, the largest fleet they had, and Coruscant all in one go. So what did the remaining Imperials do when this happened, they all went warlord and turned on each other and try to build their own empires.

Yes but the two civilizations aren’t comparable. The Covenant existed whilst the Empire existed miraculously. There’s probably a reason why the Star Wars wiki lists the Galactic Empire as Magotocracy. Held together by magic; magic that was later taken away. The Covenant wasn’t held together by magic, but what was obviously a strong and successful framework and system given that it lasted longer than any human civilisation to date and ruled over truly massive territory during that time. Hence I don’t buy the whole act of the Covenant species each breaking down. It’s a stretch in itself that something as large, interconnected and old as the Covenant would completely disappear, never mind its client races breaking up too.

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> And that is exactly what the Elites did. Same with the brutes, who went back to nuking themselves back to the stone age or joining up with elite warlord factions. So when Karren Traviss was handed the Universe of halo. The Covenant were ruined by the actions in ghost of Oynx, a shadow of its former self. Just like when the rebel alliance won the battle of coruscant from the empire. Yes if the Galactic empire reunited, they could’ve crushed the rebel alliance Easy. But they were to busy building their own empires. And that is what is same situation the Covenant is.

The Brutes have never been detailed as having possessed a particularly strong form of governance or unity, so that’s not surprising. It’s not the case with the others though given that the Brutes were regarded as exceptional in that regard.

Another consideration is that the Empire was a lot larger than the Covenant, and individual species and societies accounted for much less of the Imperial pie than Covenant species accounted for the overall Covenant. So the Empire breaking up into its racial sub-divisions creates hundreds of groups, whilst the Covenant breaking up should create five or six. On the scale of the Empire, one its ex-members doesn’t mean much. On the scale of the Covenant, one of its ex-members means a lot: It’s 15% of the whole. So the power hasn’t dissolved all that much for the balance of power to swing so much that humanity can just suddenly dominate.

Unless of course authors say that the Covenant was all ruled by one body and that they had no other aspects to their government, and that the Covenant did everything too - no delegation, no devolution, no organisational framework, no sub-governance beneath the High Council - so that it could all just disappear and then have everyone scratching their heads in total confusion. It’s kind of silly to me. If small local charities can know exactly what to do if they lose their Chief or their Board, then I’m sure the Sangheili would survive losing the High Council in one way or another and not totally disintegrate.

> Then the UNSC got the Infinity. A ship that can easily take on a whole fleet by itself. So at the moment, Humanity is actually at a very good place.

That has been disabled how many times now? Four or something? Also, the Infinity almost got melted by a Covenant orbital cannon, so it’s well within their means to destroy. It’s just that it isn’t because of plot. It can also only be in one place at one time, so the Covenant can still sack human colonies.

> And Kilo-Five is assigned to keep humanity there for as long as possible while humanity caught it’s breath.

Not really.

> 2533274803137071;6:
> And people so forget that in halo 3, you saw the whole of the Arbiter’s fleet in that space battle over the Ark and fighting a 1 to 3 disadvantage fight. Most of his ships got wiped.

Evidence?

> Then his main ship was heavily damaged to and in vast need of repairs when debris form high charity hit it. So him being besieged like he was made a lot of sense sense he is an actual small player for most elites still see him as shamed

He was the most successful Sangheili military commander in recent memory. He wasn’t a small player. Even after his disgracing he’s responsible for having saved his species and the galaxy in his own ways, and was proven right on every decision he made at Alpha Halo regarding how dangerous the Flood can be given that it took High Charity from underneath everyone’s nose. Even his “failure” can’t possibly be viewed as a bad thing any more unless you find the concept of mass species suicide an appealing thought. BY no means should he be a small player, and that proposition will stain the Kilo-5 novels forever.

Thel’s set up for defeat and being a “little player” in those books was also entirely construed through making humanity seemingly the only thing the Sangheili ever thought about (Two dimensional much? Also, what about the Great Schism? The Flood?), and then making them all hate humans with such vitriolic passion that it made Truth’s stunt in Halo 2 absolutely pointless. Thel’s public support for peace with humanity should have had a hell of a lot more support than merely 1000 warriors in his Keep…such as the kind of public support that had the Prophet of Truth destroy the Covenant over in order to prevent inditing him for his war. However I just think that such a vision for the Sangheili didn’t fit certain agendas at the time…

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> > 2533274850869596;9:
> > Didn’t Traviss also admit she never researched the series prior to writing on top of all that?
>
>
> That is what she routinely does in order to avoid biases on her end. remembers her Save Carmine t-shirt at a Gears of War panel and that she wrote Gears 3.

She wrote Gears 3?!!? No wonder it was so terrible. :///

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Walp, Anton has this pretty well in hand and pretty well refuted, but going to throw my two cents in nonetheless.

You actually don’t see most of the Elite Councilors dead, you hear about the Brutes trying to slaughter them all, but you never actually see it, and given that you actively rescue two that are still alive in the base where the Brutes have the Scarab…as well as the fact that the whole entire Elite society is predominantly a meritocracy and a lot of your fame or prestige is determined by your martial and military performance, the Elite Councilors would be some of the more or perhaps even most skilled Elites around, even caught unawares it would be a significant challenge to kill them all. All in all, there is no actual answer as to how many of them did die or not. And even if they all were killed, it ultimately would not make that much difference in the leadership structure, new Elites simply step up to take their place. The Covenant is nothing like the Empire except in superficial similarities (like both are galactic powers and both are some of the primary antagonists in their series), Anton already pointed out how the Empire was run, so I won’t get into that. Unlike the Empire where fear of the Sith was the main thing holding it all together, the Covenant has a clearly defined and enforced system of leadership. If someone dies, then there’s already someone lined up to take their place and step in, and so on down the line. Like every government it has the top of the government (like in the Covenant’s case the High Council) running the nation as a whole, and then you have all of the smaller, local governments running and managing the day-to-day affairs of their regions. Losing the whole High Council or even just a lot of members would be a blow and there would be a brief time of disorganization as the new leadership took charge, but it would not throw the whole entire Covenant or even a faction of the Covenant like the Separatists into complete and total disarray. The Covenant would be no worse off at the loss of the High Council than the United States would if the president died, the vice president would simply take over, and if he died the guy who’s supposed to succeed him, and so on and so on down the line. And that’s what would be going on with the Elites during the Great Schism, there would be initial chaos, but that would be quickly settled as they took stock of who was still alive and what the line of succession would be. The chaos and confusion would not last long and it would be fairly quickly settled.

Also you dramatically fail to understand the differences between the Elites and the Brutes in terms of their culture and how they organize their leadership. The Brutes operate entirely off of the concept of the strongest leading, that’s why they almost always inevitably dissolve into infighting and warring with each other, because their whole entire system of leadership is determined by which Brute can stomp all the others into submission, the leader can be challenged by any individual, group, or rival tribe at any time. Unlike with the Elites where everything is rather rigidly ordered and there are clear rules to determine leadership and lines of succession. The Brutes and the Elites are prime examples of chaos and order, respectively. The Elites would not be going to war with each other or at each others throats with the dissolution of the Covenant, the whole entire leadership of the Covenant was pretty much in their hands, the Prophets held the top position and were the highest authority, but they were extremely few in number and almost the entirety of their population lived on High Charity…which means that the Elites were the ones who would have had all of the smaller administrative positions throughout the Covenant Empire. Elites would be the ones who were the regional governors and councils, they’d be the ones running the factories that supply the military equipment and civilian production, the Prophets may have comprised the majority of the head of the Covenant, but the Elites were the backbone. They’re what kept it running. Separating from the Prophets or losing their own Councilors would have very little affect on their society in the long run.

And do you even have any idea just how massive the amount of territory that the Covenant has? They take up the majority of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way…just go look that up for an idea how large it is, I’ll wait here. The Covenant would need tens, or perhaps even hundreds, of thousands of ships and fleets in order to be able to control and manage that much territory. And add onto that the fact that the Human-Covenant War didn’t even touch any of their territory, the bulk of their fleets were left completely untouched by the war. If you want an idea of just how many ships that they would have had, remember that the losses at both Reach and Unyielding Hierophant (500+ ships and the largest fleet of Covenant ships that the UNSC had seen to date during the war), which together amounted to over 820 something (at least) ships lost, were considered a pittance and both shrugged off as nothing more than minor setbacks. Also, if you will remember, the Elites controlled what might as well be the entirety of the military might of the Covenant, the losses at Joyous Exaltation (that was the name of the planet/moon in Ghosts of Onyx IIRC) would be a blow initially at the onset of the Great Schism and leave that bit of territory open for the Brutes to attempt to seize control, but even it would be a drop in the bucket in comparison to what the Elites would be in control of territory and fleets wise. Acting as if the Elites would be completely defunct and as they are in Glasslands or worse off is like acting as if England had lost all of its power or been wiped out just because they lost America in the Revolutionary War.

The problem that people have with Kilo-5 isn’t just the Elites being too weak and being portrayed as incompetent -Yoink!- that wouldn’t even know how to rub two sticks together to start a fire, but the fact that humanity and the UNSC is in any kind of position of strength at all. After the Human-Covenant War, humanity and the UNSC are in absolutely no position to put up any kind of resistance to anyone, even the many different warring Brute factions would be a significant threat to Earth and humanity at the end of the war after Halo 3. Almost the entirety of the humans’ military might was completely wiped out and the vast majority of the colonies completely destroyed, they have nothing to pose significant resistance to any outside threat or inside threat. The Infinity is also just one ship, and look at how many times that it’s been overpowered or disabled, nor can it take on a whole entire fleet but its lonesome either.

And one last thing, the fleet that the Elites had in Halo 3 was not their whole entire fleet or everything that belonged to the Arbiter. R’tas Vadum and his ships were the ones sent to go after the one Flood ship that broke through the blockade/quarantine around Delta Halo and High Charity and consequently crashed in Voi. That’s all it was, one detachment of ships sent after the Flood. And we don’t have any idea how many were destroyed or survived the battle above the Ark either. This whole entire post is filled with error ridden assumptions like that…

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> 2533274803137071;1:
> So you all hate the Kilo-Five Trilogy for how weak it portrayed the Covenant. When it was the actions in Ghost of oynx that caused them to become so weak. If none of you caught this. I highly suggest you all reread the ghost of oynx and then read the star wars X-wing series and the Thrawn Trilogy. Then you’ll finally understand what is really going on.

Actually, I kinda like the idea of the Elites being substantially weakened. I like the idea that they hyperspecialized their society under the Covenant, and now they’re paying the price for only being good at warfare. My beef with Kilo-Five was just that the writing was terrible. I loved Karen Traviss’ style – it was far more engaging than the Saltine challenge that was Nylund’s writing in Ghosts of Onyx – but Onyx was miles ahead of Glasslands. Glasslands (and most of its characters) felt like a mouthpiece through which Traviss vented a bunch of ill-considered tripe about Halsey at us; when the book was first released, I got the impression that this was a common complaint.

There are things that Traviss did amazingly well – the early scene with the two ODST dudes on Earth (super engaging atmosphere and tone there), or the way the Spartan on the ONI team was described. (I recall the Spartan being withdrawn most of the time, but outgoing and almost social when planning missions, because that was when she knew how to act. She actually reminded me of someone I know who has HFA; their social skills are weaker, so they have a hard time keeping conversations going outside of a few hobbies and narrow interests.) I see great bits like that scattered amongst a book that is otherwise lackluster at its best, and I think that Traviss seems dreadful at writing stories but brilliant at telling them. If someone else wrote a story about the weakened Elites’ struggle to adapt to post-war life, and then Traviss told that story, it’d probably be a wonderful read.

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> 2533274843742113;15:
> > 2533274803137071;1:
> > So you all hate the Kilo-Five Trilogy for how weak it portrayed the Covenant. When it was the actions in Ghost of oynx that caused them to become so weak. If none of you caught this. I highly suggest you all reread the ghost of oynx and then read the star wars X-wing series and the Thrawn Trilogy. Then you’ll finally understand what is really going on.
>
>
> Actually, I kinda like the idea of the Elites being substantially weakened. I like the idea that they hyperspecialized their society under the Covenant, and now they’re paying the price for only being good at warfare. My beef with Kilo-Five was just that the writing was terrible. I loved Karen Traviss’ style – it was far more engaging than the Saltine challenge that was Nylund’s writing in Ghosts of Onyx – but Onyx was miles ahead of Glasslands. Glasslands (and most of its characters) felt like a mouthpiece through which Traviss vented a bunch of ill-considered tripe about Halsey at us; when the book was first released, I got the impression that this was a common complaint.
>
> There are things that Traviss did amazingly well – the early scene with the two ODST dudes on Earth (super engaging atmosphere and tone there), or the way the Spartan on the ONI team was described. (I recall the Spartan being withdrawn most of the time, but outgoing and almost social when planning missions, because that was when she knew how to act. She actually reminded me of someone I know who has HFA; their social skills are weaker, so they have a hard time keeping conversations going outside of a few hobbies and narrow interests.) I see great bits like that scattered amongst a book that is otherwise lackluster at its best, and I think that Traviss seems dreadful at writing stories but brilliant at telling them. If someone else wrote a story about the weakened Elites’ struggle to adapt to post-war life, and then Traviss told that story, it’d probably be a wonderful read.

True. But people hate the whole trilogy as a whole. But the complaints I see isn’t in her writing style. It’s in how weak she made the Covenant and how strong she made Humanity seem.

After reading it all. I really felt that 343i was hurting a bit when halo 4’s story was finally done and asked traviss. “We have no excuse for why humanity is so powerful by 2557 and why earth isnt glass yet. So we need you to come with a way for halsey to get arrested and why, why the Elites are so weak, and why humanity didn’t get finished off. Get to it”

Which over all is a challenge For any author. Unlike star wars and Gears of War where you knew what happened in between mostly playing the games. Almost everyone was clueless on what happened in the years between halo 3 and 4. So I think, going from scratch to fill in those plot wholes. So yeah. As you said, she had to come up with the story. I bet If 343I actually has one and gave it to her like they did for Gears of War, it would’ve been the best novels in the halo series.

17

But alas. I concede defeat to you all. Your points are all really valid. Still. I enjoy the books and still do

18

I think the reason most of the fans disliked Kilo-5 was because it had the audacity to vilify the Elites and portray them in a negative light. Heaven forbid the ELites be subjected to any sort of negativity. They can do no wrong.

These are the things that I loved about it.

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> 2533274800842897;18:
> I think the reason most of the fans disliked Kilo-5 was because it had the audacity to vilify the Elites and portray them in a negative light. Heaven forbid the ELites be subjected to any sort of negativity. They can do no wrong.
>
> These are the things that I loved about it.

Same. Hell if you watch the terminals in halo 2. The Arbiter is practically on War Criminal status. If he wasn’t humanity’s ally now. You sure as well know the UNSC would’ve found a way to drag him to earth and tried him and burned him alive

20

I agree with most of the stuff you said coma except for 2.
The first is the size of the covenant Empire. While we all initially though that the covenant just controlled a huge chunk of the Orion Arm it appears that its territory was actually much larger extending to other arms of the galaxy.

The second thing I disagree is with the impact of High charity’s destruction. It’s not just the High council that perished. It’s the entire covenant leadership. All of the ministries gone in one night. All of the factories there gone in one night. The capital of the covenant perished along with millions of people responsible for running the empire and the city (eaxh to their duty of course).

Th damage was also religious so regardless of what governing bodies there have been left, the Sangheili that form them saw the entire religious framework of the covenant collapse overnight and for an once deeply religious people that would lead to disagreements and dissolution of Alliances. While we know that many local Keep alliances were not affected the damage is mostly caused by the warlords. With the leadership gone each warlord got the chance to use their fleet as a means of imposing their will on how to run things. Many hated 'Manity, other are stuck to covenant ideals, others are confused, others turned to mercenaries, others just hunted the Jiralhanae, others formed an alliance with 'Manity, others fought each other for power. Let’s not forget that many if not most of these warlords are in fact Kaidon aka politicians. So even if some government bodies or organisations like the Ascetics are left, a guy with a fleet of 200 ships can just ignore them especially when everyone else does so, as they all try to claim a piece of the Empire.