Gryunjalla

The Gryunjalla are an elusive alien race that once held a close relationship with the Jiralhanae, whose name means 'Prospector' in the Jiralhanae tongue.

The Gryunjalla encountered the Jiralhanae after the First Immolation in the 1300s, where they traded their translight ore freighters in exchange for the right to mining the asteroids orbiting Doisac. These were used to independently establish the first interstellar Jiralhanae colonies, while other worlds were colonized by the Gryunjalla resettling them on resource-rich planets for use in mining. These worlds would be handed over to brute control following the end of the operation. To control the rate of Jiralhanae expansion, and the raids brought on by ravaging warlords, the Gryunjalla tightly controlled all knowledge on the maintenance and manufacturing of slipspace drives, with each device being rare and valuable to the brutes.

The Gryunjalla would be successful in their efforts of curtailing Jiralhanae expansion, until contact with the Covenant was established during the Classical Spinward Migrations. The trade of older Covenant vessels would break the brutes' dependency on their benefactors, which led to a series of escalating raids by warlords. Following the fall of Doisac during the Covenant-Jiralhanae War, a delegation would negotiate for safe passage of a mobile colony through Covenant space. This would be their only face-to-face interaction with the Gryunjalla.

At the end of the Human-Covenant War, Codename: BRICKLAYER believed that rumors of mass-abductions of humans on Outer Colony stations was connected to the Gryunjalla.