Huragok

The Huragok (Factitius indoles), known to humans as Engineers, are a pseudo-species of biomechanoid lifeforms created by the Forerunners and a former Covenant client species. As a general rule, Huragok are overwhelmingly peaceful, docile and display a savant-like dedication to their work, with little regard for anything else.

A handful of different Huragok variants have been identified by the Covenant, the most common being the Builder/Engineer type. These Huragok are purple-blue or pink, and specialize in analyzing and repairing machinery. A rarer subtype is the Lifeworker Huragok, which is smaller than the Engineer variant, green in coloration and specializes in medicine. There are other variants mentioned only in Covenant historical texts, namely a larger type of Engineer encountered on gas giant-based facilities, and a sturdier variant that presumably fulfilled some role in the Forerunner military. It is apparent that the Huragok are merely the best known one of several varieties of artificial lifeforms created by the Forerunners, though many of these have either died out or not have yet been discovered.

History
The Huragok were discovered by the San'Shyuum early on in Forerunner maintenance facilities and were subsequently drafted as a client species. While they would come to fulfill a crucial role in the Covenant as specialist technicians, the Huragok's status in the hegemony at large was more akin to that of tools than true citizens. They would frequently accompany technicians and discovery-priests while reverse-engineering Forerunner technology, as well as being routinely assigned to maintain Covenant ships and facilities. A small number of Huragok were captured by the UNSC near the end of the Human-Covenant War, becoming valuable assets in several of the technological breakthroughs to come.

Biology
Sometimes regarded as a form of semi-biological AI, the Huragok are composed of nanomechanical organ and tissue analogs mostly indistinguishable from their real counterparts.

Psychology and behavior
Depending on the definition, the Huragok are either sapient or semi-sapient, as despite their incredible aptitude in technological matters, they lack some of the traits typically associated with sapient species such as culture, complex introspection or social behaviors. Still, they do evidently possess a range of emotions, display unique personalities and are capable of having independent agency and goal-oriented behavior. These have been theorized to be the result of independent "evolution" that has occurred within the species over numerous generations since the Forerunners' departure, or were simply always part of them.

As the UNSC would learn after the war, it can be notoriously difficult to get Huragok to doing something you want just by telling it to. They can also be temperamental and might end up doing something completely different than one asked them to; this also means giving them valuable technology to tinker with is always something of a gamble. Still, when they do cooperate, the Huragok are a major technological boon and led to many advances particularly in reverse-engineering and synergistic technology programs within the Beta-3 Division.

Communication
Huragok mainly communicate through a form of sign language by manipulating the cilia in their tentacles. While rather challenging for outsiders, members of the Covenant tasked to interact with the Huragok were capable of learning this sign language to some extent, enabling them to communicate with the Huragok. Mastering this sign language would usually take years; the Unggoy, with their natural linguistic talents, would often learn it the quickest. In addition to this, Huragok emit a range of whistles and wails as a secondary form of communication. Quickly realizing the difficulty of communicating with the Huragok in a straightforward manner, one of the first things the UNSC did was trying to use text-to-speech and keypad-based systems to facilitate communication in Standard English. As it turned out, however, the Huragok do not either understand written and verbal communication at all, or are unwilling to. This forced the UNSC to resort to learning the sign language, with AIs' often serving as interpreters.