Worldship

A worldship, also termed megaship, is the Covenant's name for large habitats that are designed for slipspace travel. Sometimes taking decades, if not centuries to fully build up, these craft are intended to house significant civilian populations, as well as act as mobile centers for spreading the Covenant's faith, gathering trade tithes, as well as various other roles. As a result, much of their interior is allocated to entertainment, housing, and businesses that occupy these stations, with long spires that are pockmarked with docks for merchants. Worldships are universally captained by by high-ranking and/or wealthy individuals, typically senior San'Shyuum such as Prophets or Sangheili lords, though a small number are known to have been owned by Yanme'e queens, Kig-Yar magnates, the wealthiest Unggoy merchants, and Lekgolo meta-colonies.

Roles and design
While they are built to be generalist and self-sufficient first and foremost, many worldships do also specialize in certain tasks. Some are created as forgeships, housing extensive industrial and materials-extraction plants and sub-vessels, along with docks for resupply, repair and refit. Others are designed for establishing and supplying new colony worlds, carrying out missions in the Holy Ecumene's marches for decades if not centuries. Such worldships transport can transport entire clans and their retinues and affiliates to fledgling outpost-worlds, and are able to keep the new inhabitants comfortable throughout the settlement process, which the ships (or their parasite craft) can carry out virtually from start to finish; for example, utilizing local and internal resources for setting up surface and orbital infrastructure and settlements, and engaging in habiforming should it be required. Most if not all worldships engage in trade and commerce in some form, and some worldships specialize in various forms of trade near-exclusively.

While most worldships are not built for war, they still possess extremely-powerful shields, and they can support military deployments by providing shore leave, consumables such as food and fuel, and repairing warships with their expansive dockyards. Those that are specifically built for combat or ministry use are classified as Guardians.

Worldships vary from a dozen kilometers in length to many dozens, with by far the largest being the holy capital city High Charity at over three hundred kilometers at its longest point and massing at an estimated over 100 trillion metric tons. Most worldships are at the lower end of the size scale at around 10-30 kilometers in length, with a handful reaching over a hundred kilometers in size, though this also varies by the ships' design. Because of their size, most worldships apart from the smallest ones are very slow and sluggish in sublight travel, and incapable of rapid maneuvers or high accelerations either for structural or power output reasons.

Culture
Most worldships and their populations are called Peripates, and spend much of their time wandering endlessly around the Holy Ecumene and beyond. Many travel from system to system, trading with the local societies in goods and services, such as ship construction and repairs. In such a capacity, a worldship may spend years, even decades in a given system if business is good, only to eventually move and set up shop elsewhere. Some have been known to travel beyond the hazy fringes of the Covenant Sphere and trade with Fringe or even Ulterior civilizations, including the Gryunjalla and the Cix-Tu. In this capacity the worldships' crews and inhabitants, like the Peripates overall, also bring news and information from different parts of space to what they call "Rooted" populations. Many of the worldships' inhabitants are also temporary, and may only dwell aboard for some years or decades before settling in at a given system ("going placid") or moving on to another ship or potentially even the sacred High Charity itself.

Most worldships carry an array of sub-vessels, and many also have retinues of unofficial or semi-affiliated hangers-on who follow them around, albeit often on a temporary basis. All but the least wealthy and notable also have their own security fleets, with the ministerial Guardians usually being trailed by full-fledged ministry armadas. Sometimes multiple worldships also form caravans, traveling in small groups. Often this extends to trade and political alliances in their dealings with other groups.

Since the onset of the Great Schism, most civilian worldships and other Peripate vessels have attempted to remain unaffiliated with major factions. This is in keeping with the overall independent mindset of the Peripates, who often see themselves as distinct from the "Placid" societies. Worldships whose captains and/or leaders have pledged loyalty to either the Schismatics or Loyalists are typically restricted to whatever territory those factions control at a given time — which considerably limits their operations, namely business. Ministerial and ecclesiastic worldships vary in their alignment, and some have shifted from one side to another depending on the changing tides of the civil war. Some Prophet-captains of major worldships pledged themselves to the Prophet of Truth's new order, with the Unyielding Hierophant and its predominantly-Jiralhanae crew being one of the earlier examples. Out of these, some continued to align themselves with the Loyalists though others threw in their lot with the Schismatics following the establishment of the Concord of Reconciliation. Many trader-oriented worldships would later align with the Ecumenic Mercatoria instead of any of the ideological or religious polities.

Notable worldships

 * High Charity — The Covenant's holy city and mobile capital. By far the largest, most well-armed, well-protected and all-around resplendent worldship.
 * Unyielding Hierophant — Ministry of Providence Guardian station moved into the Human Sphere in the later years of the Human-Covenant War. Destroyed in the Tau Ceti system by a SPARTAN-II raid in 2552, along with Truth's planned invasion fleet of Earth.
 * Favorable Winds — Loosely High Charity-shaped, ancient and decrepit worldship. Fell under the control of the Unggoy Archdeacon Huhnub the Blessed and his Empyrean Dominion during the Great Schism. Called New High Charity by its new occupants.