Battle of Hesduros
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- "He may call himself the Hand of the Didact, but he has only drawn the hand of destruction to our people. His campaign against the Swords of Sanghelios brought the Arbiter's wrath down on us."
- — Kaidon Panom, regarding the attack on Hesduros.[1]
The battle of Hesduros was a military engagement fought in the Blooding Years at Hesduros around September 2558 between the Swords of Sanghelios and Jul 'Mdama's Covenant. The battle was significant due to Hesduros' place as the resurgent Covenant's primary operations base and headquarters, and came on the back of a steady series of setbacks inflicted on them by the United Nations Space Command earlier in the year. It involved a Swords of Sanghelios attack on the world, destroying its infrastructure and putting the Covenant on the backfoot, forcing their retreat to a new base at Kamchatka.[1]
While the precise date of the battle is unknown, it took place some time in September 2558, placing it around the time of Jul 'Mdama's mission to the Absolute Record and the subsequent splintering of his forces. Ultimately, the campaign was a clear success for the Swords of Sanghelios, and a major contributor to the Covenant's subsequent defeat and the end of the Blooding Years a month later.[1]
Background[edit]
Hesduros became the seat of power for Jul 'Mdama's Covenant in early 2553, following the Sangheili's escape from Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) captivity inside the shield world Sarcophagus. Jul was able to escape using a slipspace portal that transported him to Panom keep on Hesduros, where he began to accumulate power with two goals: destroying ONI and deposing the Arbiter Thel 'Vadam on Sanghelios.[3] For the next five years, Jul waged a bloody war against the Arbiter and the Swords of Sanghelios termed the Blooding Years.
Throughout 2558, Jul 'Mdama and his Covenant were engaged in two separate ongoing wars against their two opponents: the aforementioned Swords and the United Nations Space Command (UNSC). Between February and July of that year, the Covenant engaged in three major battles against the UNSC, each inflicting a string of defeats against them. These included the loss of the shield world Requiem in the Requiem Campaign, a failed attempt to capture the Janus Key from the UNSC at Oban, the Battle of Aktis IV and the beginning of an internal schism led by Sali 'Nyon, and a defeat at the Absolute Record that saw the end goal of Jul's conquest plucked from his grasp alongside the defection of a large portion of his army to Sali 'Nyon. Throughout these battles, 'Nyon was able to sap away much of Jul's authority by positioning himself as the "True Prophet", claiming that Jul did not truly believe in the faith fuelling most of the Covenant and that he was a false leader.
Throughout these engagements, Jul came to heavily rely on his army of Prometheans for additional support, which had been gifted to him by the Ur-Didact a year prior during the Battle of Requiem, alongside Jul's titlage as the "Hand of the Didact".[4] However as the year went on, Jul's authority over these Prometheans began to waver as the units themselves experienced glitches. After the durance of Promethean Knight TDS-009 was examined by Doctor Halsey in the wake of its unstable behaviour in the Battle of Aktis IV, she surmised that the Knights created from the human population of New Phoenix who had been forcibly assimilated the year prior were inherently unstable bases for such an automaton, and that it would only be a matter of time until they too rebelled against Jul's control. Writing in her journal on July 22, she concluded that she would have to find a way to end her alliance of convenience sooner than expected. Around this time, the Strategos leading Jul's Prometheans also began to detect the presence of a rogue ancilla within the Prometheans' network; unbeknownst to it or anyone else, these were the early echoes of Cortanas attempts to take control of the Domain, which would eventually allow her to wrest control of the Prometheans from Jul.[5]
Ultimately, by mid-late September of 2558, these combined factors had left Jul's Covenant in a precarious state, which may have been cause for the Swords to strike directly at their primary base on Hesduros.
The battle[edit]
Little is directly known of the battle itself. During the fighting, the Swords of Sanghelios attacked Panom keep on the Hesduron northern supercontinent of Vakkoro, reducing much of the city-state to rubble and inflicting many losses.[1] Ultimately, the Swords proved victorious in the battle, leading Jul to abandon what positions of his remained on the world and fall back to a new staging area at Kamchatka.[1][6]
Aftermath[edit]
- "What remained of Jul 'Mdama's military fortresses on Hesduros had already been laid waste, with the last remaining pockets of his alliance scattered to the wind."
- — Curator on the demise of 'Mdama's Covenant[7]
The loss of Hesduros was significant for the Covenant, and ultimately a major contributor to their eventual final defeat the following month.
After Hesduros' loss, Jul 'Mdama relocated his forces to the Forerunner world of Kamchatka,[6] hoping to stage them there for an eventual attack on Sanghelios.[1] However, while at Kamchatka he was betrayed by his Promethean forces (now under the control of the Created) and then, finally assassinated by Fireteam Osiris.[8] The remnants of his forces rallied under a council of officers including General Kitun 'Arach and committed what remained of the Covenant to a final desparate assault on Sanghelios..[9]
Shortly after the battle's conclusion, a contingent of warriors from the Servants of the Abiding Truth landed at Panom keep on Hesduros to access the slipspace portal to Onyx that was present in the keep's Forerunner ruins. By this time, the rubble and bodies from the fighting had yet to be cleared. The Servants, led by Dural 'Mdama, ultimately accessed the portal with the aid of a Huragok and proceeded to begin their planned attack on the coalition facilities there.[1]
List of appearances[edit]
- Halo: Legacy of Onyx (First mentioned)
Sources[edit]
- ^ a b c d e f g h Halo: Legacy of Onyx, chapter 5
- ^ Halo: Legacy of Onyx, chapter 2: This chapter establishes the events of Halo: Legacy of Onyx as beginning in September 2558; the attack on Hesduros occurred around, or slightly before, this date.
- ^ Halo: Fifth Canticle
- ^ Halo: Vertical Umbrage
- ^ Halo: The Machine Breaks
- ^ a b Halo Encyclopedia (2022 edition), page 75
- ^ Halo Mythos, page 193
- ^ Halo 5: Guardians, campaign level Osiris
- ^ Halo Waypoint, Canon Fodder - High Value Histories (Retrieved on Sep 8, 2022) [archive]
