High Charity

"Even when High Charity was very far away, the merest pauper of a peripheral world could feel its pull. All of the empire revolved around High Charity like the worlds and the moons about a star, and only Sanghelios and the Sunlit Worlds, perhaps, could match its pull. And then there was the flow of tithes and pilgrims. Rivers of wealth beyond measure, students and petitioners without number, and armies of the faithful marched across the length and breadth of the Covenant Empire as High Charity wandered about, just as the tides wash across a garden world with a solitary moon. I cannot put to words the psychic shock of High Charity's demise, or the devastation wrought when that river of faith and fortune was denied an outlet. Can you imagine how the markets were crushed under the glut of that wealth, or how those vast stores fed the engines of war? Can you imagine how the pilgrims must have fallen into despair, and turned their fury upon each other? How they were perfect recruits for armies and cults of the most vile nature? High Charity is gone, and the universe shall never be the same again. The old calendar and all its ages are retired. I date year zero to the loss of that mendicant city, and this is year ten of a new Age of Abandonment."

- Commentary on the loss of High Charity, attributed to the Minister of the Common Weal

High Charity was the Covenant's holy capital city and main base of operations. An enormous mobile city-station, High Charity was the primary center of political, economic and religious power within the Holy Ecumene for the majority of the Covenant's existence, housing the High Council and much of the bureaucracy of the Covenant government, including the ministries. This changed with the Great Schism, which saw the city-station plunged into a violent civil war, then assimilated by the Flood. In the end, the converted husk of High Charity was destroyed at the Ark in the final weeks of 2552.

Design and construction
High Charity's infrastructure is as old and byzantine as the many, many ministries that designed and renovated it. The station was riddled with voids that were on no blueprint, telecommunication cables that went nowhere and connected with no system, and entire streets whose original purpose has been long forgotten. These inclusions and dropstones were the subject of many a legend that survive to this day.

Even High Charity's exterior design is the result of various successive phases of expansion over the course of Covenant history. It began as a somewhat sleeker structure and has had a lot of elements added to it over time; for one, the dome was originally much smaller and was only expanded to its latest diameter through various stages to accommodate the city's growth over time. Much of the length of the Unbreakable Spine is probably original construction, but had much fewer docking structures around it at the start. Internally, large chunks of the city have been effectively rebuilt several times, though there are sections deep within that are original.

The same goes for tech. While select pieces of tech such as the engines are original, the Holy City has had just about every game-changing Forerunner discovery embedded to it over the ages; particularly relics too large for any other Covenant ship to transport. Many of the temples in the holy city are Forerunner structures transported there from worlds' surfaces or Forerunner installations in space.

Historical events also left their mark on the holy city. After the latest Unggoy Rebellion, devastated sections of High Charity were rebuilt so as to be less labyrinthine, with large streets easier for heavy vehicles such as Scarabs to traverse; for much of the Unggoy rebels' advantage had come from the maze-like environments of their quarters.

Construction
High Charity's origins laid in two San'Shyuum worldships, the Consecrated Psalm and Holy Ground, the largest non-Forerunner starships of the Reformists' fleet. Built from the shards ripped from their homeworld centuries ago, both of these vessels were practically unarmed and protected only by a modest fleet that flew glorified police ships. Any attack from a determined Sangheili fleet could easily overwhelm them if their all-powerful Forerunner Keyship was not around, which could not be guaranteed to come to their defense. However, their huge power demands needed to fuel war forges, agricultural domes, and population comforts meant that any weapons fitted to them could not be used reliably, complicating plans for upgrades.

That was, until, a shipwright known as the Solemn Architect became involved in 897 BCE. He proposed permanently connecting the two ships together, where the combined output of their reactors would allow the installation of heavy weapons and shielding. The space between them could be closed up to house much more extensive factories, training arenas for their soldiers and pilots, and a reactor of immense proportions. A breathtaking structural spine would hold them together, and Forerunner engines would be brought in to provide the speed. Such detailed concepts were initially dismissed as radical, completely unfeasible, and time-consuming to implement, but with all other options either unsuccessful or lacking the development needed to implement them, it was eventually accepted. These plans would, in effect, create the first foundations for what would later be called High Charity. Albeit, the assembly of asteroids and otherwise-spindlier structure would be a far cry from the beauty of its final form. Nor was it capable of its own interstellar travel, as it had to be transported to its destinations by the Keyship.

The Architect never saw the completion of his brainchild, as he was killed after he was captured by a Zealot team. However, his plans were developed further throughout the conflict closer towards a weapon, as San'Shyuum generals realized the value it could provide as a source for supplies and replacement vehicles during long sieges. While the Keyship remained by far the single-most powerful weapon of the conflict, the combined Consecrated Psalm-Holy Ground platform was championed for its logistical prowess. For the first time in the war, Sangheili colonies could no longer simply wait out a Reformist invasion, and one by one, their worlds would begin to fall. While the War would persist for decades more, it slowly became evident that the San'Shyuum would win any sustained conflict by simply being able to whittle down their enemy until they surrendered.

After the signing of the Writ of Union that formally created the Covenant, the worldship, now christened High Charity, was chosen to act as the berth for the Keyship. As a gesture of goodwill and peace between the two species, the Sangheili donated the command platform Kutan-Hingoor, one of their most formidable and celebrated warships of the time, to be disassembled and reforged into the hybrid structure. From there on, High Charity would undergo a period of rapid and uncontrolled expansion, as Sangheili stations were haphazardly attached and new docks were built to accommodate the increased demand from pilgrims.

This practice lasted from 852 to 846 BCE, when the newly-appointed Minister of the Hearth, Laka Mowai, announced plans for a major reconstruction of the station. He convened a great assembly of shipwrights, architects, and engineers from both species, forming what would become the First Assembled Choir of Builders, whose goal was to plan for its future expansion. For fifty years, concepts were drawn up, thrown out, or revised and integrated into an ambitious blueprint for the future station. By 791, their great planning was ready to be implemented. Builders and laborers from all across the Covenant were contracted to build it, becoming a massive inter-species project involving the San'Shyuum, Sangheili, and later, the Lekgolo. Every known Forerunner artifact discovered at that time was incorporated into the design, and the appearance of the distinctive dome would arise over the next 143 years. By 648 BCE, High Charity would formally be considered completed. This roughly coincided with the San'Shyuum's discovery that their original homeworld had been destroyed in a supernova. As a result, the largest worldship the Covenant had built so far was officially proclaimed their species' new homeworld, as well the new capital of the entire Covenant empire. After its completion, High Charity became the main driver of exploration and colonization efforts with its faster drive and massive internal resources.

Over the next millennia, High Charity would continue to grow in size and scale. The mushroom dome was expanded several times throughout the history of the Covenant, while the Unbreakable Spine was enlarged to cope with its ever-increasing mass.

Becoming the Covenant capital
While High Charity's status as the Covenant's sole center of power would later be nigh-undisputed, this was not always so. In the earliest ages of the Covenant empire, High Charity's status was far less solidified. It was first constructed as a mission into the greater galaxy, to boldly go where neither San'Shyuum nor Sangheili had ever gone before. The Prophets were too busy tinkering with Forerunner archives and bickering over meaningless badges of scholarly prestige to govern anything. As for their Sangheili escorts, they answered to Sanghelios. This only changed over time. A ruler without legitimacy has feet of clay, for he cannot command loyalty. High Charity slowly amassed legitimacy and loyalty because its leaders were the first and foremost pioneers into the investigation of the Forerunner Ecumene and its technology. When the theologians of High Charity announced that accumulated knowledge supported this line of dogma or that, their words held weight. Sometimes they pushed this too far, and dogma became more important than intellectual honesty. Those times would be wracked by doubt and revolution, before being corrected by reformation.

High Charity's mendicant nature also gave it an air of political impartiality, one which was carefully cultivated by the wiser Hierarchs. More than that, High Charity itself had a presence. Numerous bloody civil wars were brought to a halt by the spectacle of High Charity arriving in low orbit so that the Hierarchs can declare that the fighting is over. By the end of the Covenant's first five centuries, High Charity's ascent to the apex of political power in the Holy Ecumene was complete. From there, its stare waxed and waned, but never fell. Sometimes High Charity and Sanghelios have marched in lockstep, and sometimes they have locked horns over matters of theology and power. Sometimes High Charity was at the forefront of expansion on the Covenant frontier, but some ages it wandered endlessly along the oldest of the Covenant worlds, affirming the faith. Even in the most contentious ages when anti-Hirearchs were elected to challenge the old, it was possession of High Charity that determined legitimacy.

Great Schism and Fall of High Charity
On the morning of November 3, 2552, the two remaining Hierarchs gave orders to the Jiralhanae to begin attacking and eliminating Sangheili warriors and leaders. This quickly led to widespread civil war in the city, and the rapid formation of the Schismists in light of their aggression. The Sangheili were easily overwhelmed and pushed back by Jiralhanae advances, for more reasons aside from the surprise of the Great Schism. The first is that most of the Schismist forces were prestigious paramilitary guard legions that had never seen combat in several generations, reliant instead on their recruits to gather experience beforehand. While this meant that they were extremely well-equipped and possessed some of the best weapons and equipment afforded to both factions, including the majority of dropships needed to rapidly redeploy their forces, the Jiralhanae had mostly fought in the Human-Covenant War against humanity. This left them significantly more experienced and skillful. The second main factor was that the Schismists also had far more civilians to protect than the Jiralhanae did, and the brutes were waging a genocidal campaign. Any civilians, children, or sworn clan subjects were executed when captured, which forced the Sangheili to dispatch more troops for their security. As a result, Schismist legions were far more scattered and overextended, and their honor was exploited by the brutes to encircle them into positions where there was no retreat.

This all unraveled when the Flood unexpectedly infiltrated the Holy City. Using modifications to a captured UNSC frigate's slipspace drive, the parasite bypassed High Charity's defenses and quickly crashed the warship into the station's crown. Schismist and Covenant forces were too preoccupied with wiping each other out to mount an effective resistance, and the Flood spread like a plague. Eventually, the Minister of the Common Weal met with three Jiralhanae warmasters to discuss ways to contain it. By the mid-morning, ceasefire orders were issued en masse to the troops on High Charity, as well as the fleets that battled each other around and over its local orbit. A temporary Schismist-Covenant alliance was brokered, and it was specifically mentioned that both factions needed to coordinate with each other to stall the Flood. Warships were ordered to bombard the infested regions of Installation 05 relentlessly, as well as intercept and destroy any starship believed to be housing the parasite. These orders fell apart almost instantly, as paranoid Jiralhanae shipmasters reportedly fired upon Schismist warships. The troops on High Charity fell back to the Unbreakable Spine, as the dome was believed to be beyond saving. Excavator walkers and patrol corvettes small enough to fit into the deepest bowels of station worked to stall the Flood's advance by creating a strategic firebreak around the nape of the spine, and soldiers deliberately collapsed any corridors that might allow the parasite to jump between sections. All armies still able to fight were to guard the edge and burn any combat forms that somehow made it past, and hold their positions until Installation 05 was activated. For a time, this seemed to work.

At midday, activation sequence of the Halo was broadcasted across the station and nearby orbit by Warmaster Anotatus' flagship. However, this also saw the subsequent deactivation of the station by all surviving forces, impacting morale dramatically. Worse, news circulated that blamed Sangheili forces led by Arbiter Thel 'Vadamee as the culprit for the Halo's deactivation, as well as for the death of Tartarus. As a result, tensions between the Schismist-Covenant alliance were at an all-time high; although some units obeyed orders to remain allied, fighting broke out between them. At the same time, the Flood broke through the firebreak so carefully maintained by redirecting the flow of High Charity's reservoirs towards it, culminating in a major attack on their defenses. While the first wave was for the most part held back, a second, even larger wave followed it. This was timed carefully with the Gravemind drowning out Covenant communications by using infected statesmen, generals, and other leaders to blasphemize their faith, leading to a war of faith as devotees responded in kind with hymns and prayers on military channels. Between all this, the forces of the Schismist-Covenant alliance was overwhelmed by the Flood's advance and they proceeded down the Unbreakable Spine. Although the Minister of the Common Weal attempted to rally troops to destroy the Spires of Gifting and any starships at risk of infestation, for the most part Covenant troops were too disorganized to carry these orders out. For the first time in the Covenant's history, High Charity - or any world that had previously held the title as the empire's capital - had well and truly fallen.

The Silent Passengers
One of the more persistent myths within High Charity were of the Silent Passengers. So go the rumors, when High Charity spent five years over Zhoist, a cabal of disembodied Oracles made a pact with a foolhardy San'Shyuum. If this Junior Minister, whose name has been lost to the ages, were to make some alterations to the communication infrastructure, they would reward him well. He did so, and they explained to him the location of a minor data archive under the Third City.

So this went on for another year, with each small favor rewarded with a little nugget of knowledge that would raise the Junior Minister’s stature, until he trapped one of the Oracles in a black box. No longer content to bargain for each morsel of information, he planned to extract the Oracle’s memories to peruse at his leisure. In retaliation, the cabal revealed the Minister in public to be a lecher and an embezzler. He was tried and executed, and the cabal was free to infiltrate High Charity. They became the Silent Passengers. For ages they rode the station through the Holy Ecumene, influencing its affairs in ways too subtle to detect.

Officially, the Silent Passengers didn't exist. If they did, then all of the ministries would mobilize to hunt them down and contain them, for there is no knowing where their loyalties lie. But tales abound of the fools who have struck deals with them, and the poor souls who have unexpectedly received their help. Indeed, even though the ecclesiarchy did their best to tamp out worship of the Silent Passengers, there were many shrines raised to those disembodied Oracles, and many denizens of High Charity would cry out loud for their help in times of trouble.