San'Shyuum

The San'Shyuum, traditionally known by humans as Prophets, are a sapient species that acted as the Covenant's main political and religious leaders. Despite their human nickname, only the highest social class of the San'Shyuum were actually known as Prophets, with many occupying lesser ecclesiastic or ministerial positions while most were civilians. The Prophets' numbers were in the low hundreds, contrasted with the total multi-billion population of the San'Shyuum species.

The San'Shyuum have long been a species in decline, due to their exceedingly small gene pool caused by their ancestors' historical migrations away from their homeworld Janjur Qom aboard the keyship Anodyne Spirit. Over the generations, this has led to considerable physical degradation among the species. Though medical technology has been developed to remedy this to an extent, it can ultimately do only so much. The San'Shyuum were long the least numerous species in the Covenant, with there being around 25 billion San'Shyuum in the hegemony by its later years, a fraction of the other Covenant species' populations. As most lived on the fallen High Charity, this number may now be as few as 20 million.

Origins
The San'Shyuum hail from the planet Janjur Qom in the Mowas system, evidently located somewhere in the spinward reaches of the Orion Arm. Traditionally, the planet is assumed to have been destroyed by the local star's supernova some time after the Covenant's formation, though as Janjur Qom's location is lost from any known star charts this may be impossible to verify. Some suspected that the early San'Shyuum lied about the destruction of their homeworld to cover up inconvenient questions and possibly build up the importance of High Charity as their new homeworld, but this too is difficult to confirm.

Evolutionary ancestors were hunter-gatherers, spent time in massive herds? Development of organized civilization was rapid.

Having evidently achieved a starfaring status prior to the activation of the Halo Array, the San'Shyuum civilization developed in an environment with abundant evidence of Forerunner activity; the most overt being the enormous keyship partly embedded in the crust of Janjur Qom. As they developed astronomy, they found that one of their system's celestial bodies was no planet at all, but an enormous derelict starship - one they assumed had been created by the same civilization that built the enormous vessel upon their world. Believing the vessels to be of divine origin, the early San'Shyuum began to worship the ships' makers—the Forerunner—as gods. The mushroom shape of the orbiting vessel, which the Reformist San'Shyuum would later find out had been called the Deep Reverence, left a lasting impression on the San'Shyuum; the holy city of High Charity itself would later be loosely modeled in its image.

Eventually, the San'Shyuum achieved Atomic Age equivalent technology. One notable quirk of their development was that they developed advanced information technology before the atomic bomb; the "information explosion" was extremely quick, going from semaphores to telephones to a global wireless network within less than a century. By this time, the most notable polities of Janjur Qom subscribed to Forerunner-worship. Around this time, the War of Wills was fought between the Stoic and Reformist factions among the San'Shyuum nations, culminating in the Reformist faction's departure from Janjur Qom aboard the Forerunner keyship.


 * Reformists visited Deep Reverence, possibly other Forerunner installations (remains of quarantine swarm?)
 * Stuck around in home system for some time, couldn't get slipspace drive to work
 * Subsequent Reformist activities, stayed somewhere for a time?
 * Mendicant tried to manipulate the San'Shyuum to find Reclaimers, inadvertently created the Covenant religion and was convinced by a monk to a vow of silence? Keyship's own ancilla(e) prevented MB from having full control, MB manipulated San'Shyuum to disable containment on itself?
 * Encountering Huragok at M-series facilities
 * Accessed garbled versions of some terminal dialogs + other logs
 * Pre-Sangheili wanderings on Dreadnought as brief as a few decades? Or 1-2 centuries. (unless relativistic travel / time dilation - ie couldn't get slip drive to work so cruised around at relativistic speeds?)
 * Mutiny/mutinies, marooned dissidents somewhere?

The Covenant
Later return trip(s) to Janjur Qom? (reimagined HBC plot TBD)

Great Schism
The San'Shyuum have always been the least populous species in the Covenant, and the Great Schism may have reduced their total population to as few as 20 million individuals.


 * Perception by ex-Covenant, especially Sangheili & the Many Games of Goshin-kir, figureheads, and Truth/Concord split + reconciliation

Biology
Prior to the species' regression resulting from the Reformists' self-inflicted genetic bottleneck, healthy San'Shyuum are estimated to have been slightly below human physiological capability on average. Today, they are much more frail than humans or any of the major Covenant species.

Due to their complex brains, San'Shyuum have long childhoods, and reach reproductive maturity by 35 years of age. However, their brains continue to grow and develop for much of their lives even as the body withers. Even today, many young San'Shyuum (aged ~45 and below) are able to remain relatively fit, though physical deterioration and senescence begin to set in earlier and earlier with each new generation. Life extension therapies alleviate this only to a point, and even with prolonged lifespans and gene therapies, most San'Shyuum are born with various handicaps and congenital illnesses which slowly cripple them as they age.


 * Research into life extension + bioaugmentation (Prelates part of a trend to improve genome)
 * Low-G

Psychology
The San'Shyuum's position at the Covenant's leadership is not entirely arbitrary. The San'Shyuum are highly intelligent and likely fairly unique among the currently active species in their symbolic and abstract thinking capabilities, along with an innate aptitude for grasping complex social relations and various large-scale systemic phenomena. Their Dunbar's number equivalent has been estimated to be much higher than on humans and many other species, perhaps being as high as 1,000. Their linguistic, mathematical and spatial abilities are also very developed. The San'Shyuum generally make excellent administrators, philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, physicists, theologians, scholars, bankers, anything that requires complex systemic thinking. By human standards, median San'Shyuum intelligence is estimated at around 140 on the classical IQ scale; prior to the species' long decline, it was likely much higher. This contributed to their rise as the Covenant's overall leaders, as the Sangheili would concede that the San'Shyuum were demonstrably more gifted at political matters. Unfortunately, this also enables them to use these natural talents for own their ends by manipulation and scheming, though the San'Shyuum's modern reputation as schemers largely stems from the malign activities of the Prophet of Truth and his associates along with a small handful of notorious historical examples.

Culture
Modern San'Shyuum culture enshrines vitality, fertility and youthfulness, as those things are in short supply among the species. Despite this, the species is overwhelmingly gerontocratic overall, with age generally (if not always) corresponding to a higher political and religious position. The San'Shyuum are relatively egalitarian in terms of gender roles, though there is still a clear trend toward males in high leadership positions. Part of this is due to the species' gene-pool issues and eugenic policies, meaning that fertile females near-universally spend their prime years in procreation-related duties. Even as they may be able to access political and religious posts with age, male San'Shyuum will always be many steps ahead of them. Political careers are a common option for individuals on the, though barren or genetically unfit females in particular face widespread prejudice from other San'Shyuum. As a result, they are more likely to become monastics in various holy orders rather than being part of the mainline clergy.

Social hierarchy
While Prophets and religious officials only small portion of population, the San'Shyuum by default occupy the highest tiers of the Covenant's byzantine caste system, with civilian and low-ranking San'Shyuum roughly corresponding to the Sangheili equivalents.

High Ecclesiastics
 * High Prophets
 * Minor Prophets
 * Ministers
 * Vice Ministers
 * Minor Ministers
 * Ministry staffers / Clerics

Ordinaries
 * Bishops
 * Priests
 * Archivists
 * Scholars
 * Stewards
 * Scribes / Annalists

Specialists
 * Knowledge-priests / Discovery-priests
 * Techaries / Apotecharies / Nanotecharies / Cryptotecharies
 * Chirurgeons

Monastics
 * Hieromonks (e.g. philologists)
 * Mendicants

(WIP)

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