Sangheilide

The Sangheilide were a group of aliens inhabiting a small planet in unknown space, and were genetic cousins of the Sangheili.

Description
The Sangheilide is a small species of genetically unique descendants of the Sangheili race. They share several features with their parent race, but also have noticeable differences. For example, they retain the inwardly bending knees, the four fingered hand, the elongated head, and the hunched appearance, but have mutated to have several differences. Some of these include a ridged head, smaller, less powerful eyes, reptillian like plates on their legs, chests, arms and neck, and a skinnier, less bulky overall appearance.

Technological State
The technological level of the Sangheilide is a curious mix of modern, future, and ancient, due the circumstances surrounding their culture. They cannot be easily classed into any of the Tiers, as they have haphazard advancement. For example, they use plasma weapons, reverse engineered and built from their crashed ship, and have great industrial precision, but have a total lack of the concepts of flight, space travel, and slipspace at all. Most of them live in a small rural existence, barely surviving off sustenance farming and hunting, in small tribes.

Early History
The origins of the Sangheilide species begin some 1,500 years before the Great War. During the formulative days of the Covenant, several factions within the Sangheili spoke out against peace with the prophets, and urged their species to fight to the last man rather than give in. Their objections were overruled within the Sangheili, and the Covenant was formed. At this point, the Prophets, eager to use their new power, decided to eliminate the groups that had stood against them and the peace treaty. One group of rebel Sangheili, the ancestors of the Sangheilide, decided to flee aboard a colony ship, far from where the Prophets could harm them. Unbeknownst to them, spies of the Covenant were in their midst, and sabotaged the ship before it could leave.

The early Sangheilide fled for several years in slipspace, reaching the near edge of the galaxy and finding themselves in uncharted and completely uncolonized space. They disengaged their slipspace drive and decided to land on a small planet they had found and expand, but the treachery of the prophets years earlier came to harm them. Years earlier, the drives had been set to explode once powered down, and they did so, just as planned, as the Sangheilide’s ancestors deactivated their drive above the world. The explosion badly damaged the craft, and the Sangheilide attempted to crash land.

Their attempt was partially successful. While there were few casualties, the ship was damaged beyond repair. Shipwrecked and stranded, the Sangheilide quickly turned on each other, fighting for survival in a brutal civil war. While a peace treaty was signed almost 50 years later, their entire cultural records were lost during the fighting, and most of the elders who had knowledge of the Covenant and their past were killed. However, in the last minutes of the last few elders lives, the elders warned their descendants to be wary of anyone from off planet.

The Sangheilide gradually developed a new culture, forming a society amongst their shattered ruins. They carved out a lifestyle in their new world, but without proper records, soon lost their technological advances in all but a few areas (such as plasma weapons, which they were able to crudely duplicate from their ships intact armory). However, this was not the only gradual change the Sangheilide were experiencing.

Over several generations, their offspring mutated to a point at which they no longer were part of the Sangheili species. The planet they had crashed on emitted several types of radiation, which although not dangerous, caused mutations within the Sangheilide genome. Within 200 years, they were a completely separate species.

The new species developed different customs and ideals than their ancestors, but were plagued, much like the early Sangheili, by war. This, coupled with a harsh climate, stunted their growth and technological expansion, and the Sangheilide did not grow almost at all in population or technological ability over the next thousand years. They continued in an unchanging cycle, eking out a meager existence, struggling to survive.

Modern History
This cycle was broken, however, in 2582. The Sangheilide had just finished a particularly nasty civil war over breeding rights, and were only just recovering from the carnage. Into this mess, a human craft piloted by the mercenary group “Death’s Head” crashed onto their planet, near one of the tribes that had conquered the others. The Sangheilide, remembering the old order to be wary of outsiders, decided that the Elders had been insinuating that violence was need, and decided to stage an attack and wipe out the strange creatures.

The Sangheilide tribes united and attacked once they had gained strength, but they were unable to quickly kill the aliens. An extended siege began, with the Sangheilide with superior numbers in their favor, and the aliens with training, tactics, and, to some degree, weaponry. The battle lasted for several weeks before the Sangheilide had an opening. The alien’s battle line faltered, and the Sangheilide forces were able to enter and massacre many before the line reformed.

The siege continued, and the Sangheilide found themselves on the edge of victory. They began crafting a plan for a final attack to destroy the surviving aliens, but help for the aliens arrived from above. A UNSC destroyer had entered orbit and observed the battle, and sent Pelican gunships to aid the mercenaries (ironic, since the mercenaries had ended up on the planet in the first place because they had attacked a UNSC frigate and been badly damaged.) The Sangheilide, who had never before seen aircraft, much less heavily armed VTOL gunship aircraft, were awed into submission.

The UNSC troops extracted the mercenaries and left, and the Sangheilide were left behind with no explanation. They returned to their normal lives soon after, back into the cycle, but stories of the battle remained and grew into a legend, which was eventually incorporated into their religion. Unknown to them, the ONI sent a prowler to observe them, but it did not interfere with them. There are no records of the Sangheilide ever escaping their planet, and they may have been wiped out by some sort of environmental event, though nothing is certain.

Relations with Other Species
The only contact between the Sangheilide and other sentient species ended in conflict, and any more contacts are likely to end in the same way. The Sangheilide are warlike and very distrustful of anyone from off planet, and violence is their preferred tool.

Religion
The Sangheilide religion is more similar to that of ancient cultures than that of the Covenant. They worship several deities, and have a concept of three pure, or good, gods, along with three devils. Not surprisingly, those who come from off planet are regarded as envoys from the devil, and the battle between the Sangheilide and the mercenaries has become a major event in their religion, depicted as one of three major battles with the devil before something akin to a judgment day, where the gods of purity will judge the Sangheilide based on their performance in the battles, then destroy those who they deem unfavorable (along with the entire world) bringing the pure Sangheilide to a new world of warmth and peace.

Military
The Sangheilide have no formal military to speak of. Each individual tribe has it’s own group of warriors, which can number up to 3,000 strong. In times of war, tribes have been known to ally with each other, but more frequently than not, all tribes are hostile to anyone outside their tribe. The only exception is at the planet’s single city, Yason, the site of the crashed ship. This city is managed by the top priests of their religion, and all are welcome within it’s borders. It is considered hollowed ground and war or violence of any sort within it’s walls is strictly punished.