Ministry of Etiology

The Ministry of Etiology was a government department of the Covenant, responsible for determining the purpose of Forerunner artifacts.

Description
A basic tenet of the Covenant faith is that the Forerunner did not build useless things. Everything they left behind served a purpose, and to recover and artifact without first understanding that purpose is the height of arrogance. Worse, it courts disaster. Take, for example, the Quiescent Cantilevers of Sharsho'en. Among their other functions, they generate gravitic anomalies that prevent thousands of vents from opening up and drowning the continent in lava flows.

Ascertaining the purpose of a relic, and whether that purpose has been served is the role of the Ministry of Etiology. This ministry therefore serves as a check on the power of the Ministry of Tranquility, and curtails independent relic hunting.

Human-Covenant War
This all changed during the Human-Covenant War. The risk Humans posed to the Forerunner relics was so great, Tranquility was given special dispensation to recover all relics within Humanity’s reach as soon as they were discovered. The Ministry of Etiology was reduced to a second-class status in the Human theater and nearby regions. There were those who criticized this policy, but after a Human warship infiltrated and destroyed one of the great reliquaries that the Covenant had ever discovered, what were they to say?

This policy was a tactical victory and a strategic blunder. The unfettered harvesting of relics brought the Hierarchs’ powerful friends in a powerful ministry, and the quiet auctioning off of these relics brought in the cash and political capital needed to prosecute the war. But scandal after scandal rocked the Ministry of Tranquility. Bishops from the Ministry interpreted their mandate to include relics buried too deep or located too distant from Human territory for the Humans to ever reach them. Then came the Siege of Perdition when millions of lives were wasted to recover a handful of relics.

The justification for the war rested on the accusation that Humans were stealing every relic they could find, without regard for the relic’s purpose. Though the Ministry of Tranquility never quite stooped to that level, the hypocrisy weighed heavily on everyone’s minds until it spilled over into the Great Schism.