Sangheili (Earth-8756)

The sangheili (Latin Macto cognatus, meaning "I glorify my kin"), known to humans as Elites, are a sapient species of fierce, strong and warrior-like saurians from Sanghelios, who once formed the leadership and the backbone of the Covenant alongside the san'shyuum, united on their faith and reverence of forerunners as gods and the Halo Array as tools of salvation. They have a strong hatred for the former fellow Covenant race jiralhanae, who betrayed them during the Great Schism. During the closing months of the First Contact War, the Prophet of Truth ordered the genocide of the sangheili, a plan he carefully plotted for years, using the death of the Prophet of Regret at the hands of John-117 as an excuse for being supposedly "unfit" to continue protecting the san'shyuum - in reality, motivated by the fact the sangheili started to question the Covenant's war against humanity.

This led the Covenant to fall in disarray, with most of the pursued sangheili siding with humanity and the UNSC to stop the Covenant, after learning their entire religion was false through Arbiter Thel 'Vadam; this uneasy alliance continued after the end of the First Contact War. In the following post-war decade, Arbiter Thel 'Vadam and First Blade Rtas 'Vadum founded the Swords of Sanghelios with those who followed them, establishing a grand council of kaidons, and gaining control of most of the sangheili colonies and many ex-Covenant worlds for their cause, to reform all wrongs done by the Covenant, including the end of the social rifts between its species and peace with humanity. However, they became opposed by many different factions, all who wished to re-start their own version of the Covenant and continue a war against humans and jiralhanae, leading to the Blooding Years, a civil war through sangheili space, as well as the continuing Great Schism against the jiralhanae.