Taming of the Lekgolo

"While some were shortsighted and chose to reject the promise of our union, all were eventually swayed by the knowledge that those who joined the Covenant would be welcome on our Great Journey."

- Prophet of Truth

The Taming of the Lekgolo was an event in the history of the Covenant. First contact with the worm-like Lekgolo species during the Covenant's galaxy-wide search for remnants of Forerunner technology in one of their early Ages of Conversion led to a conflict between the Lekgolo and the Covenant, eventually resulting in the former's incorporation into the hegemony.

The Covenant's use of the term "taming" can be misleading, as the Lekgolo possessed a highly advanced, if alien, culture prior to their contact with the Covenant, having reached Tier 3 of the Forerunner technological achievement scale on their own. Despite this, their space travel capabilities were extremely limited, having developed at an exceedingly slow rate due to the difficulties resulting from their high-gravity homeworld Te.

History
After the formation of the Covenant, early experiments with the Luminaries reverse-engineered from the Forerunner Dreadnought in High Charity led the Covenant to Te in the Svir system near Urs, the home system of the Sangheili, in 789 BCE. While the San'Shyuum and Sangheili hoped to find a treasure trove of Forerunner artifacts, they instead found hives of Lekgolo inside orbital rings surrounding their planet. The rings were in fact the destroyed remains of an ancient Forerunner installation in orbit. The relics had been the Lekgolo's food for millennia, and the orbital rings around the giant were actually composed of digested-and-destroyed Forerunner relics that some of the Lekgolo had been consuming. However, the Lekgolo colonies had very differing diets, as some would eat only Forerunner alloys, while other would eat everything except Forerunner materials.

Appalled by this desecration, the San'Shyuum Prophets ordered the Sangheili to exterminate the Lekgolo for unauthorized contact with Forerunner relics. Covenant fleet commanders soon found that indiscriminate destruction would have unacceptable consequences: since the Lekgolo lived in the sacred relics that the Sangheili were trying to preserve, simply annihilating the Lekgolo would have resulted in the destruction of some or all of those relics. The first battle against the Lekgolo saw the Covenant's first military defeat. The Covenant sought to take control of the Lekgolo homeworld, Te, due to its rich deposits of heavy metals. The high-gravity conditions of the planet proved particularly difficult for the Covenant to carry out a ground campaign while serving as a tremendous advantage for the native Lekgolo, who were able to combine into Mgalekgolo and other, even more powerful, gestalt forms. The Covenant first encountered the Mgalekgolo forms in 784 BCE on a natural satellite of Te, Rentus. Consequently, the Lekgolo won most, if not all, ground engagements. The Covenant's forces were completely overwhelmed by the sheer size and ferocity of their foes.

The Hierarchs of the Covenant assigned an Arbiter to help end the war through an unconventional way. The Arbiter travelled to one of the moons of Te, Rantu, that contained a Lekgolo colony. For an entire year, the Arbiter remained on the moon and studied the Lekgolo's strengths and weaknesses. On Rantu, the Arbiter encountered more Mgalekgolo forms and engaged them in combat. When he returned to High Charity, the Arbiter suggested that the Lekgolo could be "tamed" and put to better uses as part of the Covenant hierarchy. Despite viewing the Lekgolo's destruction of Forerunner artifacts as grave heresy, the San'Shyuum recognized their potential and absolved the Lekgolo from their transgressions against the Covenant religion, allowing them to join the hegemony as a client race.

Aftermath
Despite initial difficulties in communication, the compliant Lekgolo were incorporated into the Writ of Union in 784 BCE. Impressed by the Mgalekgolo fighting prowess, the Sangheili incorporated them into the Covenant military. After many experimentations, individual Lekgolo worms were given proper training by San'Shyuum ascetic priests and were used to explore the electrical pathways deep inside the Dreadnought on High Charity. It became a ritual for San'Shyuum priests and Huragok to insert Lekgolo into the Dreadnought to allow them to probe for information for a time, before retrieving the worm and returning it to its colony. In exchange for providing troops and manual labor to the Covenant, the Lekgolo were granted access to the Covenant's advanced slipspace technology, elevating them from their native Tier 3 to the Covenant's Tier 2.

The Taming of the Hunters was pictured on one of the seven murals in the Mausoleum of the Arbiter.

List of appearances

 * Halo 2
 * Halo: Contact Harvest
 * Halo: Broken Circle
 * Halo 2 Anniversary
 * Terminals