When the Covenant discovered the Yohnet they viewed the populace as insignificant and made them a fringe race, given that the Unggoy and the Jiralhanae were primitive and insignificant why were they incorporated? I mean from an imperial standpoint I can see the Jiralhanae for workers and enforcers, but the Unggoy…why are they more valuable than the Yohnet?
We don’t know when the Yonhet were encountered by the Covenant. The Unggoy could have already been members of the Covenant at the time and the Yonhet might not have been capable of replacing them. Unggoy breed like rabbits, giving the Covenant large numbers for laborers and cannon fodder so the Covenant may have been comfortable with their place in the hierarchy.
Unggoy breed in very large numbers, and mature quickly. And combined with the primitive level of technology on Bahalo, enslaving the Grunts was a logical step for an empire in need of disposable troops that could quickly and easily be replenished with little expense. Keep in mind that the Kig’Yar once filled the role of the Grunts and largely failed at it, due to their fragile bodies and rebellious nature, and the Grunts served as a more than adequate replacement for general Covenant infantry.
As for the Jiralhanae, the Brutes filled the role for shock troopers, with their impressive strength and ferocity. They also made exceptional occupation forces that had the ability to conduct clean up operations against enemy troops leftover from the initial invasion, before the Covenant began glassing worlds. Incorporating them was also relatively painless, as the ‘might makes right’ aspect of their culture and overall simplistic totem worship of their religions meant that with a simple show of force (most likely involving the annihilation of the most influential Master Packs on Doisac) the Covenant could begin the process of converting the Brute population, having assumed a role of superiority.
As for the Yonhet, reading over their limited history it seems as though their overall small population and lack of exploitable resources made them a poor choice for inclusion into the empire. And what they seemed to provide (smuggling and trading) was already fulfilled by the Kig’Yar. The Yonhet accepted the Covenant religion and supported the empire with what trade they could (one might hazard a guess that the Yonhet most likely filled the needed role of being the main civilian traders in the Fringe).
From a non-lore standpoint, whoever came up with the Yonhet most likely couldn’t figure out how to properly expand upon the existing species of the Covenant without disrupting the balance, so this new species of frog/fishmen were thrown into the mix by creating the Covenant Fringe, thus now allowing the writing team to pull insignificant species out of the hat whenever they need to fill role [Y] and they’re too worried about messing with the species everyone knows and arguably loves. Or loves to hate, at least.
For the Unggoy, I think people have already made a few good points on them, so I don’t think I could really expand on those explanations.
The Jiralhanae however are interesting. As mentioned on their Halopedia entry, they were the final addition to the Covenant empire prior to it dissolving, in fact it was 33 years prior to a Contact Harvest (2492 CE). No that much time between the discovery of the Jiralhanae and the Covenant’s first encounter with humanity to look for new species. 25 years after that, the Jiralhanae have effectively replace the the Sangheili as the leading military caste in the Covenant. I’m currently questioning why the Jiralhanae had replaced the Sangheili in military matters, and how they could do it effectively. The Jiralhanae only had been around for 58 years to make an influence upon Covenant society. Let’s assume the Jiralhanae had double, or even tripled their population in that time, let’s assume 30 billion. Now the Sangheili however have been around for over 2,000 years, and they have hundreds of colonies. A trillion or more Elites would be a decent estimate. So how can the Brutes effectively replace the Sangheili as the Prophets protectors, when there could be 20 Elites to one Brute, or more. Maybe 50, a hundred Elites even for a single Brute? And we know each Male Elite must serve the military, likely similar for the Brutes.
TD;DR: unless the Brutes can reproduce just like the Unggoy, the Brutes simply don’t have the numbers to effectively replace the Elites as the leading military caste of the Covenant. And in 58 years, they’ve gained enough influence and power to replace the Elites. There has to be something more than just simply being ignorant, easily manipulated apes to allow them to reach such a high status in the Covenant empire.
And as we know the Yonhet weren’t made proper members of the Covenant due to their numbers and insignificance, what makes the Brutes different to them in terms of the former?
> 2533274926227685;4:
> For the Unggoy, I think people have already made a few good points on them, so I don’t think I could really expand on those explanations.
>
> The Jiralhanae however are interesting. As mentioned on their Halopedia entry, they were the final addition to the Covenant empire prior to it dissolving, in fact it was 33 years prior to a Contact Harvest (2492 CE). No that much time between the discovery of the Jiralhanae and the Covenant’s first encounter with humanity to look for new species. 25 years after that, the Jiralhanae have effectively replace the the Sangheili as the leading military caste in the Covenant. I’m currently questioning why the Jiralhanae had replaced the Sangheili in military matters, and how they could do it effectively. The Jiralhanae only had been around for 58 years to make an influence upon Covenant society. Let’s assume the Jiralhanae had double, or even tripled their population in that time, let’s assume 30 billion. Now the Sangheili however have been around for over 2,000 years, and they have hundreds of colonies. A trillion or more Elites would be a decent estimate. So how can the Brutes effectively replace the Sangheili as the Prophets protectors, when there could be 20 Elites to one Brute, or more. Maybe 50, a hundred Elites even for a single Brute? And we know each Male Elite must serve the military, likely similar for the Brutes.
>
> TD;DR: unless the Brutes can reproduce just like the Unggoy, the Brutes simply don’t have the numbers to effectively replace the Elites as the leading military caste of the Covenant. And in 58 years, they’ve gained enough influence and power to replace the Elites. There has to be something more than just simply being ignorant, easily manipulated apes to allow them to reach such a high status in the Covenant empire.
>
> And as we know the Yonhet weren’t made proper members of the Covenant due to their numbers and insignificance, what makes the Brutes different to them in terms of the former?
Exactly, elites more often than not have been portrayed as the brutes martial superiors, opting for the more tactical approach and what not (exceptions are of course plenty, but this is more of the where the general trend is leaning towards) so the elites also seem to have that going for them, but one thing that the brutes seem to have that the elites lacked was innovation, after all didn’t the elites eschew human weaponry and weren’t the brutes the ones to implement the bubble shield from the humans? I might be misremembering but this seems to imply that brutes are more willing to innovate than elites, and that might be something that they had going for them, and if you trying to mantein your empire’s military hegemony, having guys willing to innovate might be more desirable than having guys with a long and studied military tradition case in point Japan between the 19th and 20th century
The Elites are basically space samurai, mired in tradition and personal codes of honor. These things are very hard for a society to break free of, thus why the current Elite civil war has raged on like it has (after all, if it was only over being used by the Prophets to invoke mass suicide of the entire species the conflict would have been long over by now). So it is not so much that the Elites are not innovative, it is just that they have a very long history stacked against change and breaking traditions. And now that change has been forced upon their species as a whole, we’re seeing the two dominant factions going at it. Swords of Sangheilios vs the Storm Covenant. Change vs traditions.
As for the Brutes, the Brutes are barbarians. Their culture revolves around fighting and the survival of the strongest, and so they don’t have the same amount of qualms regarding alien weaponry as the Elites do. Anything that can be used as a weapon is acceptable to them, but culturally they’ve not innovative. At all. Their entire history is ‘find better rock to kill rivals with’ until they bombed their own world into nuclear winter before the Covenant stepped in and likely saved their species from self induced extinction. Now that the Covenant, the one thing that bound the packs together and kept the peace by giving them new enemies to fight, is gone, the packs have once again largely turned upon one another. Also keep in mind that while they were very quick converts to the Covenant religion, the Brutes as a whole had almost no knowledge of the concept of sanctity. Hence why we see most of them treating Forerunner relics with the amount of reverence the other Covenant species (specifically the Prophets and Elites) do. Remember the Brute urinating inside the Cartographer in Halo 3? Yeah.
As for their position in the Covenant, again the Brutes were used as shock troops, occupation forces and more or less acting as the police to keep the civilian populaces of the Grunts, Kig’Yar and other lesser species of the Covenant in line. And they are very easily manipulated as a whole, which is why Truth had the Elites replaced. Why put up with a species that is militarily superior and equal to your own in intellect when you can simply replace them with easily controlled puppets?
The ruling class in a caste based society always needs a subservient population to rule. The Unggoy fit that servent caste.
> 2533274838418174;6:
> As for their position in the Covenant, again the Brutes were used as shock troops, occupation forces and more or less acting as the police to keep the civilian populaces of the Grunts, Kig’Yar and other lesser species of the Covenant in line. And they are very easily manipulated as a whole, which is why Truth had the Elites replaced. Why put up with a species that is militarily superior and equal to your own in intellect when you can simply replace them with easily controlled puppets?
But that couldn’t have been it because brutes would have a hilariously smaller population than the elites and considering the requirements of an occupation force the more you have the better.
> 2533274926227685;4:
> For the Unggoy, I think people have already made a few good points on them, so I don’t think I could really expand on those explanations.
>
> The Jiralhanae however are interesting. As mentioned on their Halopedia entry, they were the final addition to the Covenant empire prior to it dissolving, in fact it was 33 years prior to a Contact Harvest (2492 CE). No that much time between the discovery of the Jiralhanae and the Covenant’s first encounter with humanity to look for new species. 25 years after that, the Jiralhanae have effectively replace the the Sangheili as the leading military caste in the Covenant. I’m currently questioning why the Jiralhanae had replaced the Sangheili in military matters, and how they could do it effectively. The Jiralhanae only had been around for 58 years to make an influence upon Covenant society. Let’s assume the Jiralhanae had double, or even tripled their population in that time, let’s assume 30 billion. Now the Sangheili however have been around for over 2,000 years, and they have hundreds of colonies. A trillion or more Elites would be a decent estimate. So how can the Brutes effectively replace the Sangheili as the Prophets protectors, when there could be 20 Elites to one Brute, or more. Maybe 50, a hundred Elites even for a single Brute? And we know each Male Elite must serve the military, likely similar for the Brutes.
>
> TD;DR: unless the Brutes can reproduce just like the Unggoy, the Brutes simply don’t have the numbers to effectively replace the Elites as the leading military caste of the Covenant. And in 58 years, they’ve gained enough influence and power to replace the Elites. There has to be something more than just simply being ignorant, easily manipulated apes to allow them to reach such a high status in the Covenant empire.
>
> And as we know the Yonhet weren’t made proper members of the Covenant due to their numbers and insignificance, what makes the Brutes different to them in terms of the former?
They only rose up because the San’Shyuum wanted a strong species to protect them and kill all the Sangheili because the Elites were questioning way too much about the Human-Covenant War, why the Humans weren’t added as a part of the hegemony and how to deal with them (which could mean they would overhtrow the San’Shyuum and also discover the truth about their religion - which ironically was what happened). Of course, this was all over time. The Jiralhanae are very good warriors, such as the Sangheili, but they hadn’t a similar number of individuals nor most of the skills they had with the starships and non-Jiralhanae weapons.
Truth’s move seemed more like a suicide plan to be honest. But he made them rose up the ranks faster, hence why they were at the top by 2552. He knew they would join the Hierarchs and exterminate the Sangheili after 33 years of tensions and strong nemesisship, so he made them feel more important, such as making them climb ranks quicker and allowing them to occupy Sangheili positions.
> 2535452429527716;9:
> > 2533274926227685;4:
> > For the Unggoy, I think people have already made a few good points on them, so I don’t think I could really expand on those explanations.
> >
> > The Jiralhanae however are interesting. As mentioned on their Halopedia entry, they were the final addition to the Covenant empire prior to it dissolving, in fact it was 33 years prior to a Contact Harvest (2492 CE). No that much time between the discovery of the Jiralhanae and the Covenant’s first encounter with humanity to look for new species. 25 years after that, the Jiralhanae have effectively replace the the Sangheili as the leading military caste in the Covenant. I’m currently questioning why the Jiralhanae had replaced the Sangheili in military matters, and how they could do it effectively. The Jiralhanae only had been around for 58 years to make an influence upon Covenant society. Let’s assume the Jiralhanae had double, or even tripled their population in that time, let’s assume 30 billion. Now the Sangheili however have been around for over 2,000 years, and they have hundreds of colonies. A trillion or more Elites would be a decent estimate. So how can the Brutes effectively replace the Sangheili as the Prophets protectors, when there could be 20 Elites to one Brute, or more. Maybe 50, a hundred Elites even for a single Brute? And we know each Male Elite must serve the military, likely similar for the Brutes.
> >
> > TD;DR: unless the Brutes can reproduce just like the Unggoy, the Brutes simply don’t have the numbers to effectively replace the Elites as the leading military caste of the Covenant. And in 58 years, they’ve gained enough influence and power to replace the Elites. There has to be something more than just simply being ignorant, easily manipulated apes to allow them to reach such a high status in the Covenant empire.
> >
> > And as we know the Yonhet weren’t made proper members of the Covenant due to their numbers and insignificance, what makes the Brutes different to them in terms of the former?
>
>
> They only rose up because the San’Shyuum wanted a strong species to protect them and kill all the Sangheili because the Elites were questioning way too much about the Human-Covenant War, why the Humans weren’t added as a part of the hegemony and how to deal with them (which could mean they would overhtrow the San’Shyuum and also discover the truth about their religion - which ironically was what happened). Of course, this was all over time. The Jiralhanae are very good warriors, such as the Sangheili, but they hadn’t a similar number of individuals nor most of the skills they had with the starships and non-Jiralhanae weapons.
>
> Truth’s move seemed more like a suicide plan to be honest. But he made them rose up the ranks faster, hence why they were at the top by 2552. He knew they would join the Hierarchs and exterminate the Sangheili after 33 years of tensions and strong nemesisship, so he made them feel more important, such as making them climb ranks quicker and allowing them to occupy Sangheili positions.
The thing is, truth until Halo 3 always seemed to be smart enough to know what he was doing was a suicide move.