By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.
Posted by: S2 Black 0ut
Arbiters are expected to die fulfilling their duties. Those pods contained the bodies of Arbiters past.
Personally, I'm very sceptical about this. Look at Ripa 'Moramee (Arbiter from Halo Wars), he was thrown from the Apex, I don't think it at all likely that his body was able to be recovered. There's also the BS about the armour, that "one size fits all" for every Arbiter, which is also bollocks because Ripa was 8'1" whilst Thel was 7'10" - a pretty substantial difference there, Thel would definitely not fit into it.
I reckon it's all another fad by Truth, it's not like someone is going to go and look in any of the stasis pods to check if the Arbiters are in there because it'd probably be seen as heresy, the Prophets just BS'd their way into convincing the Covenant that they have the bodies of the Arbiters.