The roiling irony of Thel as the Arbiter, and to a greater extent the Sangheili race, is an ever-present fear that the San’Shyuum’s own instrument of power might eventually turn against them. In this way the Prophets’ aggressive betrayal becomes logical, if not prescient.

Sangheili en Animus (The Covenant End)

After nearly two full decades of heroic campaigns against the humans, Thel’s course took a drastic turn.

One fateful mission, while his fleet was destroying the human fortress-world called Reach, Thel pursued a single ship known as the Pillar of Autumn. Exiting slipspace before the vessel, he managed to trap it; but his attention was drawn to something different — something which would change the fate of the Covenant forever.

A Sacred Ring.

Though the Halo rings were only legend until that fateful moment, Thel made a brash decision to board the human vessel rather than immediately obliterate it. It is not known why he chose to invade and secure the human craft instead of the ring, but logically speaking, his motives likely revolved around his protracted quest for the location of the human homeworld — the center of their infestation and the key to ending the war. During the battle, a human demon — or Spartan, as they called themselves — escaped with an AI construct who carried this precious information.

The battle spilled out onto the surface of the ring and during the process of securing it, a horror was unleashed upon the fleet. What would later be regarded as an impediment against the unworthy, an ancient parasite known as the Flood spread across the ring’s surface, taking control of any sentient being in its path. Before Thel could isolate and purge it, a small band of humans, led by the demon, destroyed the Halo ring. The shock of this atrocity reverberated throughout the Covenant, and upon returning to High Charity, Thel was certain that he would be executed for his failure. And, as expected, the High Council requested that he be disemboweled and paraded through the streets of High Charity.

The hierarchs, however, had other plans. The Prophets of Truth, Regret and Mercy ordered that he be branded with the ‘Mark of Shame’ — an act which seared a humiliating symbol on his chest. But before he was able to commit suicide, as was required by Sangheili honor in wake of humiliation, Thel was brought in front of the hierarchs and told that he could reclaim his stature if he were to take on one final mission. To stave off immediate execution and recover his honor, he could become an Arbiter, a skilled assassin designed to dispatch any problem which the hierarchs were concerned about. He accepted and donned the armor, certain that he would, as all other Arbiters before him, die at the mercy of the mission.

Thel ‘Vadamee and Rtas ‘Vadumee served together in the Fleet of Particular Justice, during the Covenant’s war against humanity. After the events on Delta Halo, they’d retain this same level of camaraderie, only now they would be fighting alongside humankind.

In this mission, Thel and a band of special operations Sangheili were dispatched into a fortified Forerunner relic not far from the debris field of the Sacred Ring. Rtas ‘Vadumee, one of Thel’s very own Elites, was the commander of this unit, making the mission even more disarming for Thel. Their objective was a rebel Elite and his faction who were broadcasting heresy to the detriment of the Covenant union, the Prophets and the Great Journey — the hopeful culmination of their entire belief system.

While hunting the heretic leader and obliterating his camp, shadows of something far more malevolent began to unfold in his mind. Thel began to see clear evidence of the San’Shyuum favoring the Jiralhanae — a rumor he had worked hard to ignore for decades.

Upon returning to High Charity, he learned that the Prophet of Regret had discovered a second Halo ring and thanks to the recovered Oracle they had found in Thel’s mission, they also knew a way in which the ring could be activated — commencing the Great Journey all Covenant had been praying for ages for. However, in the process of activating the Forerunner machine, Regret was murdered by the same demon who had destroyed the first ring. For this reason, the Honor Guard of Sangheili warriors was decommissioned and completely replaced by Jiralhanae warriors.

Thel, in the wake of his failure at Installation 04, was forced to take on the suicidal mantle of the Arbiter. Interestingly, rather than this being the first step toward certain death, it would eventually act as the catalyst to unify the Elites against a hidden treachery.

Had he more opportunities to consider the culture shift, Thel might have uncovered a much darker plot at play, but he was soon entrusted with another mission. The Arbiter was tasked with the goal of finding something referred to as the Sacred Icon — a key which would ignite Halo’s fire and activate this new ring’s full power. After carving his way through legions of Flood which had infected the ringworld, Thel located the Icon after dispatching a pair of humans. There, he also found his fate — along with the true intentions of the hierarchs.

Tartarus, a leading chieftain of the Jiralhanae, seized the Sacred Icon from the Thel and attempted to murder him. He was unsuccessful and the Arbiter was cast into the depths of the Halo ring where he found more answers then he had ever bargained for. There, the human demon who had shamed him was being held by an abomination of the Flood — a Gravemind. This ancient creature told Thel that the San’Shyuum had lied about the Sacred Rings, and that they were in fact weapons of containment against the Flood and not a pathway to divinity as had been taught by the Covenant for ages.

Though he fought against it at the time, somewhere deep inside his mind, Thel knew this was true. The confirmation would come when he discovered that the hierarchs had ordered the jailing and execution of all Sangheili on the High Council — the last vestige of Sangheilian control within the Covenant. During a bloody battle which stretched from the surface of the Halo ring to the streets of High Charity, the Jiralhanae made war against the Sangheili.

After slaying Tartarus, Thel and a band of humans formed a tenuous bond to stop Truth from activating the rings. In what would be the most humbling moment in all his military service, he joined forces with the demon responsible for his punishment and together they fought to defend the very world he had spent decades searching for: Earth. Here, the Forerunners had buried a machine capable of transporting them to the Ark — an ancient cradle world from which Truth could activate the remaining Halo rings simultaneously.

A Sangheili remnant led by Rtas ‘Vadum came to Earth and together both humans and Elites followed the Covenant to the Ark. After breaking into the citadel where Truth had barricaded himself, Thel and the Spartan finally located the last San’Shyuum hierarch. There, the Arbiter executed Truth, halting the decades of deception which had trapped the races of the Covenant in blind bondage. When the Gravemind threatened to take control of the Ark, the Spartan and the Arbiter discovered a mighty weapon which they could use against the Flood — a Halo installation fashioned as a replacement for the original ring which Thel had failed to protect.

Once the San’Shyuum’s tool of unquestionable loyalty, in his assassination of Truth, Thel ‘Vadam proved that his newfound title would arbitrate far more then heresy this time around.

On its surface, Thel and the Spartan activated the new installation, starting a chain reaction that not only destroyed the localized Flood infection, but obliterated the ring and the Ark itself. During the devastating blast, only Thel was able to return back to the human homeworld, where he paid homage to his once-enemy-now-compatriot, the lost Spartan known by his own as the Master Chief. From there, ‘Vadum and the Elites who survived the war, set course for Sangheilios to ensure that their own world would remain safe.

The details of his future are not fully known, but we do know that he found some reprieve in a political position within Sangheili’s new government, and it is understood that he served out the rest of his days in relative peace. With the fall of the Covenant, a vacuum of authority needed to be filled. Thel ‘Vadam would once again lead his entire race — this time, however, he would do so from an esteemed councilor’s seat rather than the armor of a shamed warrior.

/Vociferous

I, Sangheili / Comments

[Caveat: The following piece draws its text from a variety of sources, most prominent of which is Halo: The Cole Protocol. Because of the nature of this article, its author felt that exhaustive source citing would have hampered its flow with little overall benefit to the reader. For this reason, there are no citations for unique events, but the author is confident that the net worth of the article accurately portrays the story of Thel ‘Vadam and the Sangheili culture as depicted in the aforementioned novel, as well as Halo 2, Halo 3 and ancillary offerings from Bungie/Microsoft.]