Lekgolo

The Lekgolo are a species of gestalt organisms and one of the former client species of the Covenant. Individual Lekgolo are small, eel-like creatures. While barely sapient by a conventional definition, these eels can combine together to form sapient "subsistence gestalts" with a networked intelligence and often specific purpose. The cognitive capabilities of these Lekgolo colonies depend on the type and experience of the Lekgolo eels in question, the level of synchrony within the colony, as well as the size of the overall gestalt; the largest Lekgolo "meta-gestalts", which may span entire starships or vast cavern networks, can approach or even surpass artificial intelligences in intellect and processing power, though due to the inherent limitations of biological neural nets, their cognitive speed is generally slower.

The first species to be annexed into the Covenant after the Writ of Union, the Lekgolo fulfilled a diverse variety of roles within the hegemony. Lekgolo gestalts served as heavy infantry, known as Mgalekgolo (or Hunters to the UNSC), though even more of them were drafted for industrial purposes, operating various machinery. Due to the Covenant's strict ban on artificial intelligence and machine learning, specialized, purpose-bred Lekgolo colonies also fulfilled various computational duties from slipspace navigation to probability computation; strains of Lekgolo also served in roles related to deciphering Forerunner relics, such as the inner pathways of the Forerunner Dreadnought.

Early history
The Lekgolo's pre-Covenant history is shrouded in mystery and only parts have been deciphered. Even the Lekgolo's world of origin is uncertain, and their early evolutionary history is shrouded in mystery; some scholars have speculated that the species may not even have originated in the Svir system. Svir is an energetic blue giant star that bathes Te's orbital space with deadly radiation, and the Covenant explorers did not initially expect to find any life in such a system. All the planets are all relatively young, meaning the evolution of the Lekgolo would have had to have occurred prodigiously quickly had they evolved there; there is also no other life around Te outside the Lekgolo swarms.

Although popular Covenant historiography highlights the Covenant-Lekgolo contact as the "taming" of a near-bestial race, it is evident that the Lekgolo had been spacefaring for an undetermined duration of time prior to the Covenant's discovery of the Svir system, perhaps for thousands, even tens of thousands of years. Although the species' fateful first contact with Covenant explorers occurred in the rings and moon system surrounding Te, Lekgolo colonies had independently spread to many bodies of the system over vast stretches of time. These colonies were largely independent and often physiologically as well as technologically divergent from one another.

Biology
The Lekgolo are the Covenant's most truly alien client species; neither their anatomy nor psychology have obvious counterparts in the native biomes of the other species of the known Orion Arm. As a result of this, the Lekgolo are considered a prime example of the Covenant's classification of an enigmatic species - as opposed to the more congruent species that form the primary castes of the empire.

An incredibly extremophilic species, Lekgolo are capable of surviving in the vacuum of space and withstanding copious amounts of radiation.

Reproduction
While Lekgolo are hermaphroditic, their reproduction reflects the gestalt nature of the species; Lekgolo are capable of reproducing in pairs or even asexually, producing a clone of the parent, but this is heavily frowned upon and has various disadvantages, including leaving the offspring vulnerable. Instead, entire colonies contribute genetic data — their equivalent of DNA — via their connected neural net to produce offspring; while this has some parallels to Huragok reproduction, the offspring is still naturally born. Lekgolo produce egg-like vessels from which their offspring hatches; these are usually kept warm and protected inside the gestalt. A colony decides within itself which member(s) will produce eggs. Though more than one at a time usually do, this renders the one responsible vulnerable for a time, so an entire colony rarely lays eggs at once.

Psychology and traits
Lekgolo psychology is notoriously abstruse, and does not translate well to the perceptions of Congruent species. Rather than discrete, fixed individualities, Lekgolo consciousnesses are better understood as malleable processes that change shape multiple times throughout the life of a colony. This also means Lekgolo colonies can easily change viewpoints and states of mind as circumstances change. For menial tasks and even fighting, Lekgolo gestalts often effectively turn off their higher mental functions, only to resume them in the next moment. Consequently, a Mgalekgolo can fight fiercely as a feral beast in battle and appear entirely calm a moment later. While morality does not typically concern the Lekgolo in any conventional sense, some colonies do show an interest in it as a mental exercise. Likewise, though the Lekgolo are not naturally predisposed to religion, many have taken a liking to Sangheili war-poetry and philosophy along with the esoteric aspects of the Covenant faith. Human xenobiologists have called this a "blank-slate psychology" in which Lekgolo collectives adapt their entire mode of thought to the situation at hand.

Even the rate at which a gestalt perceives time can differ based on its neural synchronicity at the time. When walking to a Mgalekgolo, it is impossible to know if it has already noticed you, is still registering your presence, or ignoring you because it is preoccupied with other mental tasks.

Communication
Lekgolo communication is famously cryptic. Although they have a highly developed capacity for abstraction and symbolic thought, spoken language does not come naturally to them. Their conceptualization of the self as an independent subject in relation to the external world also differs from that of other species due to their psychological fluidity; as detailed above, a Lekgolo colony does not regard itself as a fixed subject but a continuum of shared experiences, mental states, and interrelations. Many facets of consciousness and being that the Lekgolo find meaningful, which relate to the synchronicity of the colony and their experiences functioning as a coherent whole, are completely abstruse and impossible for other species to relate to.

Within a collective, communication is instantaneous and requires no language as we understand it; complex concepts are instantly transmitted as high-bandwidth neural data. Although sometimes perceived as such, Lekgolo colonies are not telepathic; when joining to form a colony, Lekgolo worms physically join their neural networks via external micro-cilia, direct extensions of a worm's own neural net. Still, complete synchronicity is only honed over time, and a sudden unraveling a gestalt is always a traumatic experience. Bonded pairs communicate simple ideas through language, produced by the subsonic rumbles of worms rubbing against one another in coordinated ways. Complex concepts and long conversations are achieved via neural meldings, but these can only be performed when the pair is out of danger. If a Mgalekgolo pair is ambushed mid-melding, for example, it will usually both take some time to register the threat and disengage the connection without trauma.

Surprisingly, poetic language and symbolism have emerged as a way to bridge the communication gap. Lekgolo gestalts use evocative imagery and allegorical examples to express their being and relation to others in a given situation. This was familiar to the Sangheili, who already use poetry as well as historical and mythic metaphor as prominent ways of conceptualizing oneself. Still, because their grasp of verbal language is tenuous at best, Mgalekgolo utterances often confound those not versed in their ways. Not only is their way of constructing spoken semantic units out of mental concepts wholly alien, but they also struggle with syntax and grammar. For example, Lekgolo gestalts seem to have only a tenuous grasp of the distinction between past, present, and future, and their understanding of motivations and goals differs; they may refer to themselves in the past as a distinct agent from their current self. Sometimes the meanings of their poetic utterances are simply impossible to parse. One difficulty involved is that the symbolic imagery used by gestalts varies from swarm to swarm, even gestalt to gestalt, and those without the appropriate cultural background may be completely lost when trying to decipher their speech. Those unfamiliar with Lekgolo communication often interpret such strange statements as abstract contemplative poetry, even if the gestalt is trying to communicate something concrete. To facilitate communication, most Covenant ministerial units have Sangheili interpreters from a clan bonded to the particular swarm of the Lekgolo in that unit; such clans include Lekgolo interaction in their family traditions, passed on from generation to generation.

Lekgolo gestalts have difficulty recognizing individuals, even more so than the usual problems with species recognizing each other by facial features and other outward traits. Over generations of diligent study of Lekgolo psychology, the Covenant have been able to make accommodations to this hurdle, usually involving verbal identification of oneself or adornments meant to designate select individuals for the Lekgolo's convenience, though the latter is mostly used by dedicated Sangheili interpreters and handlers. Even so, the gestalt may forget about or confuse individuals, even mistaking those of different species for one another. Part of this is no doubt due to the Lekgolo's own psychology; since they hardly have a fixed view of personhood, they may regard the same individual, encountered after some time has passed, as a new entity.

Lekgolo communication has some commonalities with that of the Xar-Shaa, another species that does not naturally use phonetic language, though Xar-Shaa communication is even more indecipherable.

Rest
Lekgolo do not, strictly speaking, experience sleep in the usual sense. However, they do require rest and periodically enter states of reduced activity and responsiveness, typically known by other Covenant as "meditation". During such states, both individual worms and gestalts reorganize their memories and refresh neural links, as well as integrate new experiences. However, a Lekgolo gestalt can continue to function in a slightly reduced capability with over half of its constituent Lekgolo "idle". This reduces the colony's cognitive functions, but allows it to remain alert. When on duty, gestalts typically arrange their sleep-analogue in rotating shifts. Complex experiences or prolonged stress can result in an entire colony going unresponsive for a time, requiring that the entire gestalt function as a single coherent unit lest parts of the colony lose synchrony with the whole — a dangerous state of disharmony that may lead to an internal "schism" and, at worst, the unraveling of a colony and the dissolution of its identity. Some colonies are more naturally predisposed to internal contemplation than others, which determines their temperament.

The four main temperaments
Although the Lekgolo do not have discernible personalities the way we understand them, some trends can be drawn from colonies' behavior over time. Covenant scholars summarize Lekgolo gestalt psychology as having four temperaments: Anarchic, Concordant, Meticulous, and Pugnacious.

The Anarchic-Concordant axis determines how cohesive a colony is. An anarchic colony is split into multiple sub-minds, or even individual Lekgolo eels. They do not function as a single mind, but rather as voices shouting in a crowd. This can be a very dangerous state for the colony to be in, as individual members may get displaced or even killed by the rest of the colony. On the other hand, Lekgolo sometimes find the ability to ‘think in parallel’ useful. A common aphorism goes that "It takes a year and a half for a San'Shyuum child to be born, no matter how many women are assigned to the task."

A truly concordant colony is united in thought and purpose, and refers to itself as "I" rather than "We". This may as well be nirvana for the Lekgolo, but maintaining it for a long time is exhausting, as it suppresses the individuality of each individual Lekgolo eel.

Meticulous-Pugnacious also exists on an axis. Meticulous mindsets are contemplative and slow-moving, and barely exist in the moment. They’re too busy predicting the future or contemplating the past. This is the kind of mindset you want for a colony that’s dedicated to processing information or executing long, delicate tasks. On the other hand, such mindsets have trouble adapting to rapidly changing circumstances. There are stories of the UNSC ambushing Covenant excavations, only to be all but completely ignored by the Scarabs and the Locusts until their handlers could wake them from their ongoing process.

Pugnacious mindsets do not plan, they react. Almost the entire colony is dedicated to observing, processing, and reacting. As a side effect, pugnacious mindsets rarely get tunnel vision, but often they blunder into a situation with no thought for the consequences.

Mgalekgolo
Commonly known by UNSC personnel as the Hunter, the Mgalekgolo is the most common form of Lekgolo gestalt fielded by the Covenant in heavy infantry roles, though such configurations are not very common outside ministerial service. A single colony is divided into two heavy carapaces, which provide an artificial endoskeleton for the colony to coil itself around along with heavy armor capable of resisting virtually all small arms and a heavy weapon, usually some form of fulminite cannon.

Twalekgolo
Nicknamed the Tankbeast by UNSC personnel, the Twalekgolo is a four-legged walker-form used to carry heavy weaponry. Slightly smaller than two halves of a Mgalekgolo colony, they are also less cognitively capable, being relatively similar in intelligence to various loader-forms used to move cargo.

Mega-gestalts
On the highest level, Lekgolo organize themselves into what are called mega-gestalts or metagestalts. These collectives are enormous, up to thousands of times the size of mobile Lekgolo forms commonly fielded by the Covenant. Many are too large to effectively move or even support themselves in a normal gravity, and as such operate in low-gravity or microgravity environments. In their native habitats, it is such massive colonies that the Lekgolo eventually organize themselves into, burrowing within vast tunnel networks on lifeless moons. Cords of Lekgolo several meters thick link larger processing-nodes which may contain hundreds of discrete parallel-minds existing in a constant state of flux, ever coalescing in and out of mental topologies. Few outsiders have the privilege to witness these tunnel networks, which form vast, alien geometries after centuries of Lekgolo carving - a process dubbed by human xenobiologists as "Lekgoforming".

At this stage, few Lekgolo gestalts literally think alike, as they delight in coming up with new ways to think. Mobile forms such as Megalekgolo or sub-Mgalekgolo are regarded as borderline feral by the standards of these gestalts. However, such fighter-colonies often integrate into larger gestalts at the end of their service, as their unique experience is cherished by the whole. Lekgolo mega-gestalts that particularly value knowledge-sharing and malleable individualities are known as Flux-oriented communions. These are contrasted with Placid tendencies, which are more slow to accept change.

Sometimes, mega-gestalts will spend considerable wealth to obtain a starship. It could be a mothballed carrier or a starliner or a custom bulk freighter. The only requirement is that the ship be large enough to contain the mega-gestalt and all the equipment it can purchase. These starfaring colonies roam the slipspace lanes of the Covenant empire, and sometimes disappear beyond the border regions for decades at a time.

At first, the High Council was loathe to authorize sales to the Lekgolo, fearing that they would seed one colony after another until the entire Orion Arm was dominated by Lekgolo. But, as it turns out, the Lekgolo aren’t as expansionist as the other Covenant species, and rarely set up new colonies.

The Ministries of High Charity were afraid that the mega-gestalts were hunting Forerunner relics, and devoted considerable resources to following and surveilling the colonies’ activity. They discovered that most starfaring colonies do not seek out Forerunner reliquaries. When they do traffic in artefacts, it is only to raise money to repair their ships and their equipment.

For the most part, the starfaring colonies seem to be overly large tourists. They bask in the radio noise of the Covenant’s established worlds, they prowl the debris fields of black holes and newborn stars, and they watch civil wars from afar. If they do have a common goal, it is astronomy. The colonies have deployed millions of probes, and though only a fraction of what they have discovered has been shared with the Covenant at large, it forms the foundation of the Covenant’s knowledge of astronomy and astrophysics.

This gives rise to the third theory, which has yet to be disproven. From the Lekgolo’s perspective, San’Shyuum, Sangheili, Jiralhanae, Kig-Yar, and Unggoy all think alike. So alike that the Lekgolo often call them ‘companion-minds’. Perhaps the mega-gestalts are looking for exotic forms of advanced intelligence similar to themselves. Maybe they’re looking for their own companions.

Culture and society
Even within the Covenant, the Lekgolo form something of an independent meta-civilization. The Lekgolo's alien nature makes them inherently reclusive; though they do interact with other species as part of their duties within the Covenant, full-fledged Lekgolo communities tend to be fairly isolated, both by choice and as a byproduct of the physical nature of those communities. Due to the Lekgolo's extremophilic nature, they could easily settle worlds unsuitable for habitation by the other Covenant species, with worlds allotted exclusively for Lekgolo settlement being known as "Swarmworlds".

Their culture and society are famously cryptic to other Covenant species, and many Lekgolo collectives — or swarms — deal only through select Sangheili clans bonded to them as their intermediaries, colloquially known as "worm-lords". As a result, many rumors and misinformation surround the Lekgolo, something the species does not seem to much care about. Like most Covenant species, the Lekgolo are not under a single governing structure, and many groups of Lekgolo have little if any contact with one another. Some Lekgolo collectives are suspected to be as alien to each other as other species.

Lekgolo native technology is generally classified as Tier 3 at its peak, though peculiarities of the Svir system's location made slipspace travel effectively impossible prior to the Covenant's arrival. It is evident that many Lekgolo collectives are highly advanced technologically, especially after their incorporation of Covenant technologies. Some Lekgolo factions were even suspected to have skirted the bounds of techno-heresy at times, though their secluded nature made thorough inquisitions difficult. Regardless, few Lekgolo groups ever rose up to challenge the Covenant authorities in force, only doing so as part of larger movements.