Ellis Gass

Ellis Gass was the second governor of Suraka and led the Surakan forces during the Carrow Conflict.

Early Life
Ellis Gass was born in 2513 in the city of Suraka on the planet Carrow.

Covenant War
Ellis and her family evacuated Carrow along with the rest of the Surakan population in 2531 under the threat of a Covenant attack. They were relocated to the UEG Refugee Reserve on Mars in the Terra Cimmeria region. During her time there, she met and married her husband Senj and gave birth to her son Jeff. She also obtained her engineering degrees while in the UEG Refugee Reserve. At some point after getting her degree, Ellis took a position at a hydropower installation at Lake Komeno, where she witnessed an accident caused by negligence that killed some of her colleagues. This incident caused her to adopt a hands-on approach to engineering and leadership. In 2552 Ellis and her family were forced to take shelter in bunkers during the Covenant attack on Mars.

Return to Carrow
In 2553, Ellis and her family joined many Surakan refugees as they returned to Carrow after the planet was deemed a part of the Joint Occupation Zone by the Unified Earth Government and the Swords of Sanghelios. During the first four years after returning to the planet, Ellis served as an engineer under the gubernatorial administration of Kait Adelie. She was an instrumental member of many projects, such as building a massive underground bunker beneath the Wulandari Building and repairing the city's sewer system.

However, Ellis was dissatisfied with the direction of the reconstruction efforts, believing that more resources should be devoted to rebuilding the Surakan infrastructure rather than its defenses. This dissatisfaction led her to run for governor against Adelie on a platform of focusing on civil projects within the city. In order to assure the people that their safety would still be a priority, Ellis nominated Lamar Edwards, a former Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, as her candidate for vice-governor. Together they went on to win the election.

Governor of Suraka
As governor, Ellis made good on her promise to focus on infrastructural projects over military ones. Believing that the Surakan Militia Volunteers and their security fleet were already well equipped by the New Colonial Alliance, she mostly disregarded the former and moved funding away from the latter in order to fund civil engineering projects. Ellis also believed that she could disregard any threat that came from the Sangheili keeps at Rak for the moment due to the distance between the two civilizations at opposite ends of the Uldt Desert and a belief that a diplomatic agreement could be reached. As such, she organized a peace summit between herself and the Sangheili led by Rojka 'Kasaan, and a UEG Diplomatic Corps team led by Melody Azikiwe to mediate the talks. The goal of this meeting was to allow the two factions to find a way to coexist on Carrow. This meeting never occurred, as the Carrow Conflict began the day before the event was scheduled.

Jiralhanae Conflict
As the Sangheili warships began targeting and destroying high-value Surakan targets and the forces of the Voice of Maardoth made landfall, Ellis was evacuated from her home by Pelican and transported to the command bunker underneath the Wulandari Building. From there she, Lamar Edwards and her generals began trying to devise a strategy to repel the Jiralhanae on the ground and manage a civilian refugee crisis. During this period, Ellis learned that her son, who was serving in the militia, had been Killed in action. This revelation briefly sent her into a rage and made her more determined than ever to beat back the alien threat by any means necessary. Therefore, when she learned that the Voice of Maardoth's naval presence had been greatly diminished due to a skirmish with the Sangheili fleet, she moved forward with a plan to launch an all-out attack on the Jiralhanae position within Suraka. This course of action put her increasingly at odds with Lamar, who wanted to use the lull in the fighting to evacuate civilians. The death of her son also served to destabilize Gass's mental state, which was made worse by her increased exhaustion and abuse of stim-patches. This made her more abrasive as the conflict progressed. Nevertheless, Ellis put Operation: BUZZHAWK into effect, which succeeded in bringing down the Jiralhanae cruiser Foebane using asteroids previously used for mining. As the threat had seemingly been dealt with, Ellis, along with Travis Pope, went to the crater where the Voice of Maardoth had been positioned in order to personally oversee the situation.

Sharquoi Incursion
As Ellis arrived at the crater, she learned of Gray Team's presence in Suraka and ordered them to be detained and questioned. After this, she and the rest of the Surakan militia forces present were attacked by Hekabe and his newly-acquired army of Sharquoi. Ellis, Travis and a squad of soldiers were attacked by a single Sharquoi that killed everyone present aside from Ellis, who was saved by Lamar and evacuated from the site. From there she traveled to where Gray Team was being held and questioned them on their involvement and knowledge of the situation. From this conversation, a plan to assassinate Hekabe was put into motion. She then returned to the command bunker and monitored the situation. After this failed, Ellis finally conceded to Lamar and ordered the city to be evacuated. She also began working on a device that would be able to kill Hekabe or nullify his connection with the Sharquoi. In a project led by Ellis and Brandon Rhodes, a HAVOK tactical nuclear weapon was reconfigured as a power source for a M68 Gauss cannon that would fire an electromagnetic pulse that would disable the vertex and disrupt Hekabe's control of the Sharquoi. Ellis escaped with a completed device as Sharquoi entered the command bunker while several engineers including Rhodes stayed behind to slow them down.

Battle of the Sharquoi Hive
After escaping with the device, Ellis retrieved Gray Team, Rojka 'Kasaan, and Melody Azikiwe from the Uldt Desert. Together they formed a plan to enter the Forerunner facility and use the device on Hekabe. After affixing the device to a M121 Jackrabbit and entering the facility via an ariel insertion along with a squad of Surakan militia led by Corporal Wyse, her team fought their way to Hekabe's position. Though the Jackrabbit was severely damaged, Ellis was still able to get close enough to use the device on Hekabe, temporarily incapacitating him. Ellis used this moment to pull the vertex out of his skull and use it for herself. With the Sharquoi under her control, Ellis ordered them to pin down Gray Team and Rojka, then used them to kill Hekabe. After this, she called all the Sharquoi on the ground back to her position and released her former allies, telling them to evacuate the facility. She hailed them a Pelican through communicating with a militia squad, then used the Sharquoi on the captured ships formerly belonging to Thars 'Sarov to destroy those ships and themselves. Finally, in her final act, Ellis Gass manually detonated the HAVOK nuke, destroying herself, the vertex, and all the Sharquoi remaining in Surak.

Physical appearance
She was described as a tall woman in her mid-forties.

List of appearances

 * Halo: Envoy