Canon

Arlo Casille

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Arlo Casille
Biographical information

Homeworld:

Gao[1]

Born:

c. 2496[2]

Personal details

Species:

Human

Gender:

Male

Political and military information

Affiliation:

Gao Republic[1]

Title:

President of the Gao Republic[3]

 

Intrepid Eye: "Who is Arlo Casille?"
Wendell: "An unimportant Gao politician."
— Intrepid Eye and Wendell[4]

Arlo Casille is a human politician and the current President of the Gao Republic.[3] In May of 2553, as the Gao Ministry of Protection's Minister of Protection, he collaborated with the Keepers of the One Freedom and the Venezian Militia in an attempt to provoke a conflict with the UNSC on Gao that would lead to insurrectionist sympathy throughout human-occupied space, in addition to his election to the presidency.[1]

Biography[edit]

Minister of Protection[edit]

Gasper Baez: "Take arms against the UNSC? Are you insane?"
Arlo Casille: "No, sir. I am a loyalist. And I am unafraid to call the UNSC's bluff. If there is to be a war on Gao, I intend to be on the right side of it."
— Minister of War Gasper Baez and Arlo Casille[5]

In May of 2553, the United Nations Space Command's 717th Xeno-Materials Exploitation Battalion and a Spartan attachment arrived at Gao to search for an unknown object in the Montero Cave System which the UNSC refused to reveal the identify of. After a series of talks with President Tejo Aponte, the UNSC was allowed to conduct their search on the planet. The UNSC's arrival coincided with mysterious murders in the cave system and the Ministry of Protection agreed to work with the UNSC to find the murderer. In reality, the UNSC was covertly attempting to locate Forerunner ancilla Intrepid Eye, who was also responsible for the recent murders on Gao. Seeking aid in ridding his homeworld of the UNSC, Casille contacted the Venezian Militia and the Keepers of the One Freedom, both based on the nearby Venezia. The UNSC's large presence at Gao created issues for the smugglers and insurrectionists in Gao's and Venezia's sector, and with both the Venezian Militia and Keepers opposed to the UEG and UNSC, both factions agreed to help Casille remove the UNSC from his planet. In addition, Casille began supplying the Keepers with both credits and weaponry from the Gao Ministry of War's armories. On July 2, 2553, Casille was informed by Special Inspector Veta Lopis that the UNSC was searching for an ancilla on the planet, though she was personally unfamiliar with the term. Additionally, she requested specifications on the Spartans' armor to allow her to exploit weaknesses in the armor, as she believed one of the supersoldiers was responsible for the murders. Realizing the UNSC's true intents, Casille met with Dokab Castor of the Keepers of the One Freedom and Reza Linberk of the Venezian Militia in orbit over Gao aboard Esmeralda, Casille's flagship of his ministry's patrol corvette fleet. Revealing to them that the UNSC was searching for an ancilla on Gao, Castor offered Casille his schematics on the Spartans' armor in exchange for getting his five hundred warriors to the planet's surface to retrieve the ancilla.[1]

Casille had one of his patrol corvettes get Castor's One Light to Gao's surface in the Montero region, where the Keepers and Venezian Militia began planning their retrieval mission. Casille sent his associate, Petora Zoyas, to meet with the two factions to represent his interests.[6] However, after mistakenly believing that the UNSC had already captured the ancilla, the Keepers attacked the UNSC compound at the village of Wendosa. Casille provided the Keepers' forces with numerous weapons to aid in their assault. All three sides secretly intended to take the ancilla for themselves, though none brought light to this matter.[7][8] On July 5, 2553, after the Keepers began their attack on Wendosa, President Aponte called an emergency meeting between the Cabinet of Ministers. Aponte announced his intent to aid the UNSC in ending the conflict, though Casille opposed Aponte's plan and suggested that the forces attacking Wendosa were actually trying to liberate Gao from the UNSC. Casille initiated a vote to have the Cabinet order the Gao militia to support the UNSC's attackers, with the support of several ministers including Minister Trella Rangel and Minister Saul Quarres. With only Minister of War Gasper Baez's support, Aponte reluctantly agreed to compromise by having Gao remain neutral in the conflict, to which Casille agreed as he knew it would be difficult to continue to press for military action.[9] Meanwhile, the Spartans and UNSC began to resist the Keepers' attack, with both Zoyas and Linberk dying in the conflict.[10] Later that day, Casille returned to Esmeralda over Gao to ensure that Admiral Tuwa's UNSC task force in the system did not try to break Gao's sovereignty entering the planet's orbit. When several Pelican and D102 Owl dropships were deployed by the task force to aid the UNSC forces on Gao, Casille gave the order for his corvettes to destroy the craft. Not wanting to risk starting a civil war on Gao, the UNSC backed down from the fight. Realizing that he needed authority of all of Gao's military forces to prevent UNSC forces from entering Gao's orbit, Casille decided to make a proclamation to become president and announced this intent to reporter Gloria Baer of BuzzSat.[11]

Presidency[edit]

Gasper Baez: "…for as long as you're the president and I'm the Minister of War."
Arlo Casille: "For years, then."
Gasper Baez: "Oh, I'd say at the very least. Possibly even decades."
— Minister of War Gasper Baez and Arlo Casille[12]

Returning to the People's Palace in Rinale on July 6, 2553, Casille made a cabinet proclamation demanding Aponte's resignation with Casille intending to take his place.[11] With Casille gaining the majority votes from the Cabinet of Ministers in his proclamation, Aponte was forced to resign and Casille became the President of the Gao Republic. Aware that Casille was likely to openly attack the UNSC forces, the 717th Xeno-Materials Exploitation Battalion prepared to evacuate the planet with the captured ancilla.[13] Shortly after becoming president, Casille ordered the Gao battle-jumpers and MV-29 Wyverns to attack the UNSC forces on Gao. Learning that Lopis had apparently been captured by the Spartans, Casille contacted her on her COM pad in an attempt to locate her and the Spartans, who held the ancilla. When Lopis accused him of bringing war to Gao to his own benefit, Casille played innocent and offered her the position as Minister of Protection. Realizing that Casille knew that Lopis was working with the Spartans and that he only cared about recovering the ancilla, Lopis mislead the president about her location before having the Spartans destroy her COM pad. Falling for Lopis' trick, Casille had most of the Wyverns search Gao's Singing Grottos for the Spartans and Lopis, when they were actually traveling to Gao's Well of Echoes to destroy the Forerunner installation hidden within the Montero Cave System.[3] Ultimately, the Spartans and Lopis succeeded in destroying the installation with a HAVOK tactical nuclear weapon at the Well of Echoes and escaping Gao aboard an Owl, with the ancilla in tow.[14] Realizing that he had been fooled by Lopis, Casille diverted nearly all of Gao's Wyverns to pursue her and the Spartans, however they managed to return to the UNSC task force safely. With most of Gao's forces pursuing the ancilla, the surviving elements of the 717th Xeno-Materials Exploitation Battalion were able to evacuate from Gao and return to their task force in orbit, despite the efforts of the Gao Space Navy. The UNSC left the system shortly after.[15]

Following the end of the conflict, Casille was applauded by many Gao citizens for forcing the UNSC away from the planet. Casille oversaw the crater that had once been the Well of Echoes and the destroyed Forerunner installation from Independence, a Basilisk forward command-and-control craft. Casille spoke with Aponte loyalist Minister Baez, who made it clear that Casille would have difficulty keeping his failed hunt for the ancilla and his machinations secret from the public. Casille additionally intended to keep the HAVOK's detonation a secret, as he knew that if it became public, his backers would push him to retaliate against the UNSC in a fight that Gao could not win. Seeking an experienced commander to keep Gao's soldiers quiet on the events that transpired, Casille agreed to have Baez on his cabinet with the minister explaining the crater as the result of a UNSC prowler that exploded after being brought down by GMoP corvettes.[15] While Casille had hoped that Castor had died in the conflict, the Jiralhanae chieftain had actually survived and now sought revenge on the president for his treachery.[16]

Over the next six months, Castor and the Keepers hit Gao hard with acts of piracy. Eventually, Casille was approached by Dark Moon Enterprises who offered to get the UNSC to take care of the Keeper problem if he would allow them use of one of Gao's laboratories for their own purposes. Desperate, Casille accepted the deal and later signed a Warrant of Sanction after learning that the Dark Moon operatives were using the lab to experiment upon Admiral Tuwa's family as he saw the only other option as admitting to Admiral Margaret Parangosky what he had allowed and thus bringing down a war that he did not want.

Two weeks after the Tuwa's arrived, Dark Moon killed them and extracted their organs. Keeping their deal with Casille, they dumped the bodies on the Keepers' Salvation Base to draw the UNSC's ire towards the Keepers, resulting in the destruction of Salvation Base. However, Castor survived and tracked the operatives back to Gao where he attacked and destroyed the base. Casille traveled to the base in secret to see the devastation for himself, but by that time the UNSC had tracked the murder scene to Gao and realized that Casille had to be involved in some way. Both Blue Team and the Ferrets ambushed Casille's convoy and he ordered his men to surrender, recognizing that the Spartans didn't want a fight and they would lose anyway. To his surprise, Casille was interrogated by Veta Lopis, now the leader of the Ferrets. Lopis demanded answers from Casille, threatening him with non-existent regulations to get him to cooperate. After learning of the threat of a Code Hydra bioweapon, Casille finally admitted his minimal involvement in the plot and realized that both he and the Keepers had been set up to cover up the truth. Casille was genuinely horrified to learn the extent of what Dark Moon had been up to and realized that Lopis didn't have any other clues than him and Dark Moon.

As Casille insisted that Gao had been set up to take the fall, he realized that he might know a place the UNSC could start looking and asked for them to deal with Castor in return, pointing out that Castor was most likely going to the same place as Casille was worried that Castor would eventually be back for revenge. Lopis believed Casille, knowing that he didn't steal the presidency by being stupid and accepted the deal. Casille pointed Lopis to Pinnacle Station at Meridian and Administrator Sloan, the smart AI in charge who had recommended Dark Moon to Casille. Casille stated he was only telling them about Sloan because he had helped set Casille up though Casille didn't know how Sloan got involved with Dark Moon.[17]

Personality and traits[edit]

A native of Gao, Casille is very patriotic and a strong supporter of the planet's independence from the Unified Earth Government. When the United Nations Space Command's 717th Xeno-Materials Exploitation Battalion arrived at Gao to search for a Forerunner ancilla, Casille believed that Gao's honor demanded a response and Casille took it upon himself to work to remove the UNSC from the planet.[1] Casille is very manipulative and found it effective to allow his self-proclaimed instruments to think they were telling him what to do while he manipulated and deceived them.[1] Although many Gao politicians were aware that Casille was a political schemer, he succeeded in misleading them to believe that he was unsubtle and did not have the ambition to pursue presidency on Gao.[13]

Andera Rolan was an old friend of Casille in the Ministry of Protection and the only one of his subordinates that referred to him by his first name.[18] Casille was friends with Reza Linberk of the Venezian Militia and he regarded her as the smartest person he knew; she was the only person who regularly beat him at both backgammon and go. Although he found Linberk to be physically attractive, he found her personality to be unappealing and was personally interested in women with "warm and saucy" personalities rather than "enchanting and ruthless".[1]

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List of appearances[edit]

Sources[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Halo: Last Light, pages 71-78
  2. ^ Halo: Silent Storm, p. 93
  3. ^ a b c Halo: Last Light, pages 366-370
  4. ^ Halo: Last Light, page 316
  5. ^ Halo: Last Light, page 195
  6. ^ Halo: Last Light, page 147
  7. ^ Halo: Last Light, pages 153-154
  8. ^ Halo: Last Light, page 316
  9. ^ Halo: Last Light, pages 188-196
  10. ^ Halo: Last Light, pages 210-212
  11. ^ a b Halo: Last Light, pages 268-272
  12. ^ Halo: Last Light, page 383
  13. ^ a b Halo: Last Light, pages 291-293
  14. ^ Halo: Last Light, pages 376-379
  15. ^ a b Halo: Last Light, pages 380-384
  16. ^ Halo: Last Light, page 393
  17. ^ Halo: Retribution, Chapter 19
  18. ^ Halo: Last Light, page 64
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