- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
In light of Frankie's article about the covenant and the posts afterwards, I have been struck with an idea.
Prophet ceremony and purpose is not generally known to the Covenant population, most of whom simply trust in their wisdom to further the goals and territory of the Covenant.
So the nature of Prophets is more or less unknown to the other Covenant castes. I believe it also said in one of the books that the Prophets live on a world where the Forerunner had lived before they abandoned it for unknown reasons. Now here is where I make a few assumptions. Lets say, for the sake of argument, that humans are or are at least related to the Forerunner. The Prophets obviously know a lot about the forerunner and are in control of the Covenant because of their understanding of and the mysticism of the long-departed Forerunner. Now, the Covenant run into a human ship and blow it up, why? The Covenant have been studying humanity (and vice versa) for a little while before contact was made according to FS. If the Prophets realized that humans are or atleast are the only/closest relatives of the Forerunner, then they'd a pretty good reason for eliminating them.
First of all, if all Covenant castes knew that the humans, with their inferior technology and mannerisms were direct decendants or were forerunners, then their faith in these 'godlike' beings would be shaken to the breaking point. The millenia of semi-worship of Forerunner and pursuit of their level of greatness would seem to be completely wasted if they all ended up as some lowly imperial race with sub-par technology. Plus, if the humans are Forerunner and are the result of some kind of self-induced apocalypse, then trying to attain their level of greatness through the Prophets guidance would be folly because it would only lead to their own destruction. The Prophets are ultimately dependent upon the other races to keep themselved defended, and without those races loyalty, they are vulnerable to the same kind of extinction they pose to humans.
Now, the Prophets realize this before any of the other Covenant (or they assassinate anyone else who knew the truth. Remember in Halo:The Flood when Zammamme goes through all the security checks because of recent assassinations?) and the concequences of the rest of the Covenant knowing the truth. They decide to protect their position as the head of the Covenant and maintain the enigmatic nature of their Forerunner idols by destroying any and all evidence that they may be these newfound humans. That would explain why they go to such great lengths to destroy every single human and their buidings on every single planet they inhabit while maintaining their phoney motive of pursuing forerunner relics and killing the infidels who have set up camp on top of them.
Frankie's Covenant info hints that there will be Civil War among the Covenant races (the evidence is so great it screams at us). The elites aren't keen on the idea of protecting and listening to the Prophets in the first place, so how loyal would they be when they realized that Prophet dogma and religion was all a lie?
heh, I think I actually may have hit paydirt with this one, but feel free to discuss and thoroughly tear apart my theory.