Redeemer

Sangheili Redeemers are a martial order of specialized cultural enforcers and chaplains charged with investigating all honor-bound transgressions in the Covenant's Sangheili population and sometimes non-Sangheili faithless. Originally an independent order, the Redeemers were organized under the Ministry of Penance in the Covenant's later centuries following the Second Illumination.

Description
A specialized class of law enforcers, the responsibility of Redeemers begins and ends with upholding all obligations and acts related to the Sangheili concept of honor, specifically in the institutional sense. Each individual is ultimately responsible for their own personal honor and dignity, but an offending individual can also tarnish the honor of his peer group, such as a family or military order. Redeemers fulfill a particular but necessary niche in Sangheili culture, ensuring that maverick individuals do not exploit and therefore render meaningless the species' pervasive code of honor. At the same time, since honor is fundamentally an internalized concept rather than a strict law enforced from above, Redeemers' activities are not highly public and largely focus on major infractions that also have legal dimensions.

Redeemers primarily act as judges and executioners of their field, personally carrying out sentences against each infringing individual. Their authority supersedes most other policing units, only limited by the administrating bureaucrats of the Ministry of Penance and the higher governors and Councilors. While they maintain an extensive understanding of Covenant law and knowledge of religious practices, these are considered secondary concerns to them. Unlike most of their peers, their jurisdiction also extends to operatives in the field; even if they are captured, a Redeemer is expected to track them down and eliminate them for their failure to follow through on their own suicide. This is not strictly to salvage the captured warrior's honor, but to preserve the honor of his unit and to silence him, for those unable or unwilling to follow through with their own suicide are also regarded as untrustworthy and more likely to betray secrets to the enemy.

All Covenant fleets and Legions are generally granted a small detachment of roving Redeemers for the purposes of enforcing the basic tenets of honor as well as acting as field chaplains. They have typically recruited from those in senior Quaestor positions, Ultras, and Special Operations units, which makes them formidable warriors even before they receive their specialized training and education. Because of the belief that they are preserving the integrity and respect of various organizations, they are highly respected and many follow their duties with a near-fanatical focus. While Redeemers have no option of becoming officers, their experience and knowledge make them valued advisors. Redeemers are expected to harshly punish those who refuse to face judgment for their crimes, although they have shown lenience to those that come forward and atone for their actions.

Within Covenant territorial holdings, Redeemers work as traveling missionaries and lawmen, occupying a peculiar boundary between mercenaries and law enforcers. They continue to enforce appropriate punishment against Sangheili individuals found guilty of blasphemous acts or wavering in their faith. Moreover, Redeemers are frequently paid to hunt down individuals who brought dishonor upon their peer group, such as a clan or state. This is usually done if that group is not able to handle the problem themselves or wishes for the matter to be handled with particular discretion and professionalism. In principle, Redeemers' jurisdiction is limited to a select number of duties, though in practice (and depending on the moral fiber of each Redeemer) they also undertake various other tasks that are only tangentially related. Despite the solemn vows they must taken upon entering service and the very code of honor they supposedly enforce, corrupt Redeemers are not unheard of; this is in part because of the latitude they are given in interpreting the limits of their jurisdiction. These actions rarely but occasionally extend to non-Sangheili subjects if a Redeemer seems extra-zealous regarding the duties of his station. In more civic roles, Redeemers ensure communes are reinforcing High Charity-led edicts to their constituents and perform ceremonial duties for the communities they visit. These peacetime duties tend to be less volatile compared to frontier and military duties and Redeemers of older stature tend to transition towards communal service as they age.

History
The Redeemers occupy a peculiar but vital role in the Sangheili meta-culture. Early on, the Sangheili realized the impossibility of effectively maintaining consistent cultural norms in the vast interstellar meta-civilization of the Covenant. Many new colonies would inevitably drift in their culture and lapse from the ways the "elite" of the species regarded as morally proper. One of these was the pervasive sense of honor, which has its roots in the Sangheili's deep past. But over a millennium into the Covenant, the Sangheili had become spread out across thousands of light-years, and many local civilizations had little to do with one another. A consistent standard of honor could not be upheld across such a civilization when citizens of one world might have wildly divergent ideas as to what the concept even meant, or had already transitioned to exclusively legalistic systems of organizing society.

It has been argued that even the Sangheili mainstream (i.e. the societal and cultural norms regarded as proper on High Charity and most of the Sunlit Worlds) has long been an increasingly legalistic culture that prefers to think of itself as an honor-bound one out of pride and tradition. A society built on honor only truly works when that society is numerically and geographically contained enough for the honor system to be instilled universally to all members of that society; in addition, such cultures are typically born out of harsh environments where absolute trust and personal integrity are integral for the survival of the entire culture, usually no larger than a tribe or chiefdom. This applies very precisely to the Sangheili, who first arose to sapience and civilization in such conditions. However, such systems tend to break down with both scale and distance, as maintaining cultural cohesion becomes more difficult when numbers and communications range increases. As well, as technology and the standard of living improve and populations specialize, responsibility transfers increasingly from the individual to the overarching legislative framework they occupy, typically taking the form of some form of empire, nation-state, or intergovernmental union. Indeed, even planet-bound civilizations usually begin to replace or complement the traditional honor system with legalistic ones from early on, as nomadic cultures settle down and form organized civilizations which virtually require written laws and some form of law enforcement to remain organized. At this stage, both systems typically co-exist for a time, but with the honor system relegated to an increasingly secondary role. And even as their honor system remained in the background, the Sangheili were no exception to this.

With the Sangheili, the foundations for the system of honor as we know it today were born largely out of the interregnum that followed the Skyfall, as a sort of return to the species' roots after the preceding "Age of Decadence". By the time they arose to the stars again, local versions of the honor system remained fixtures of their cultures as they colonized space, and were in place in most of the major Sangheili societies that would into conflict with the San'Shyuum and later sign the Writ of Union. Even at this point, however, the honor systems largely operated on the individual and institutional level, and were complemented by robust legal institutions; even as little distinction often existed between the concepts of honor and law. The Redeemers first emerged when Sangheili splinter societies became so divergent from one another that some virtually discarded traditional honor altogether; this was around the later years of the Covenant's Late Antiquity period, when the empire's expansion outpaced its ability to maintain consistent communication and cohesion within itself, giving rise to the civilization-wide splintering that characterized the Feudal Period. To the "mainstream" of High Charity and the Urs system, this was unacceptable, as it both called to mind the maligned Age of Decadence of the past, and actively eroded the pseudo-legalistic honor system from within. Hence the role of the Redeemer was born, as a means of both acting as a cultural advisor to "educate" Sangheili from various divergent cultures to the mainline tenets of honor, along with enforcing that system by the sword where deviant individuals sought to exploit it.

Known Redeemers

 * Raxs 'Gatakurr - former Redeemer known for his corruption, left the unit to pursue a career in Covenant Special Operations.