Sha'vakan marauders

The Sha'vakan marauders was the archaic Qers'nok name given to a loose ethnicity of Sangheili pirates active during their space-faring Primeval Period.

Culture and society
While the Sangheili had a wealth of diverse beliefs, ethnicities, and spiritual beliefs during this time in their history, the Sha'vakan were one of the most extreme and despised. They were extreme technocrats, willing to dissect and apply it to any need they could envision, and only Forerunner god-machines were given some limitations due to their rarity and ethical taboos in some clans.

The Sha'vakan had always lived with anarchist principles, and so never lived in large, organized communities. Indeed, the very concept was treated with a mixture of suspicion and revulsion. After all, why should they obey the will of a man they never met, or an institution that works against the interests of the individual? For this reason, Sha'vakan leaders must ensure they personally know the men they were leading, as that was the only way they could earn their trust. However, this could only be reliably maintained in small groups, and was why their clans were notoriously volatile. It was not uncommon for members to cede in the aftermath of a successful raid, either by attempting a rebellion or stealing the captured ship.

Their liberal use of technology had been embraced even by their own bodies. The average adult often possessed such invasive features such as full limb replacements, subdermal exoskeletons, and even retractable weaponry, which easily offset the defects associated with a lifetime in microgravity. Even children possessed a neural interface and an air tank, where the installation of their first implant was always celebrated. More invasive procedures were often used whenever they passed their right-of-passage into adolescence and adulthood. Such an extensive use of cybernetics meant that all Sha'vakan had an understanding of machinery and electrics out of necessity, and machinists of all types were deeply respected. However, the crude construction of these components - down to the fact that implants were never made by any legal organization during this time - could badly distorted their body forms. As a result, there were few clans that were willing to accept that the Sha'vakan were even Sangheili, with most treating them as little more than beasts or animals.

Their reputation for madness and barbarism originated from the challenges of deep-space living, where resources had to be tightly-rationed and every person had to pull double or triple weight to survive. Crippled or old individuals had to be culled to free up precious supplies, and even today an inability to contribute was considered a fate worse than death. This led to a core Sha'vakan belief that roughly translated as the "Great Cycle" in their language. All materials, energy, and spirits were reassembled at the end of their lives to create and aid future generations. Sadly, this meant that there were few clans that respected the dead, and reports of cannibalism (though exaggerated) were not unknown during trying times. Nor did they keep prisoners, as the burden they presented to the rest of the clan could not be sustained for long.

Like all Sangheili clans at the time, the Sha'vakan had a strong connection to their past and traditions. Skills were often passed on from generation to generation, with only the most necessary or treasured knowledge stored aboard the databanks of their ships.

Raiding tactics and equipment
The Sha'vakan raiding style relied heavily on their use of ramships, which were crudely-built, one-of-a-kind starships usually adapted from some captured freighter. In spite of their appearance, they were surprisingly fast, and had a reinforced prow to absorb both gunfire and collisions with each. They often laid in wait near uninhabited planets or asteroid fields, where the gravitational interference prevented the use of blinker drives, or mask themselves as derelicts on the outskirts of interstellar jump points, where the pickings were far more abundant. In any case, once their target has been caught and disabled, they latched themselves to their prey and boarded it. Through a combination of tactics, including combat, deactivating airlocks, and filling a ship's ventilation system with toxic substances such as clouds of microscopic Subanese crystals, the enemy crew was quickly defeated. Should this fail, or a ramship was counter-boarded instead, then traps and fortified positions could be used to defeat the crew that way.

Because the individual Sha'vakan owned the equipment, weapons, and armor he committed to a fight, there was no standard equipment they used - indeed, the Sha'vakan were never organized well enough to make it necessary. However, as the environments they found themselves fighting in were often cramped and held numerous opportunities for ambushes, the vast majority preferred shorter melee weapons. Curveblades and daggers were far more popular than spike-lances or longswords, and firearms were limited to pistols or submachine guns. The Sha'vakan also favored single-use thrustpacks, which were supposed to be used as an alternative to bulky astronaut suits, but could in a pinch be used in combat.