Evaniptus

==Introduction==
The Evaniptus (ev·æn·Ip·tʌs), or Derelicts, are a former species of the Covenant, and will appear in the AAO stories Journey of Lies and Halo: Eternal Enemies.
==Biology==
The Evaniptus are a race of large insects who pride themselves on adaptability and resourcefulness. They are physically weak despite their size, and are virtually incapable of fighting without the use of advanced technology.
A Evaniptus individual is comprised of the standard parts that one might expect from an insect, with two distinctions. One is that they have four antennae in the post-adolescence stage, one pair of which is used for smelling, and the other is used for transmitting messages between each individuals. The messages are transmitted via pheromones and telepathy. Pheromones have a shorter range and are slower than telepathy, but send clearer and larger messages. Theoretically, their telepathy has no limit to its range, with it being only limited by speed and massive gravity wells.
The other distinguishing feature is the proportionally thicker exoskeleton. While the exoskeleton varies between different castes, each one is thicker in proportion to their size than any of Earth's inhabitants. The exoskeleton, along with the rest of their body, is also incredibly mutable due to many extremes. While most organisms can take years to adapt to an environment through natural selection or technological means, a single Evaniptus individual can mutate to adapt to nearly any environment within a month. When they were first discovered by the Covenant, there were billions of individuals spread across the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. No matter what planet they were located on, the insectoids had adapted to suit the environment, whether it be hot, cold, windy, watery, high or low pressure atmospheres, or even if there was little atmosphere at all. It is unknown precisely how they are able to adapt so easily, but the common theory is that the Evaniptii's bodies simply mutate to take advantage of available sources of energy, which would explain why the first thing that an Evaniptus does when landing on a planet is ingest every available source of energy. There are even some sub-species that don't need to breath, despite having the basic biology to do so.
Evaniptus also breed in variation with their environment. To heighten the odds of survival, they breed faster in more extreme environments in which adaptation is not always certain.
Literally translated, their word for this over-arching database of memories is the "Overwealth."
==History==
===Population Growth===
After the reseeding of the Milky Way, occurring around 100,000 BCE, the Evaniptus grew to incredible numbers. They were one of the first species to invent Faster-Than-Light and Slipspace travel, outpacing even the humans and San'Shyuum in this respect. With no natural enemies and a general group consensus, they had little need for weapons except to put down the occasional trouble-maker (chances of that happening were approximately 1 in 500,000,000).
===First Contact and Integration into the Covenant===
In 683 BCE, the first Evaniptus world was stumbled upon by a Sangheili scouting party. Lacking weapons, the Evaniptus quickly surrendered to the will of the Covenant. Although they had invented FTL and slipspace travel first, it had not advanced as quickly, having had no Forerunner technology to reverse engineer.
The Evaniptus became effective shock troops and infiltration units for the Covenant. Their carapaces made incredible armor-plating, which was effective against nearly any projectile outside heavy weapons. This armor was still not as effective as that of the Mgalekgolo, but the sheer numbers and rate at which they bred made them more practical military forces. The more heavily armed ones were nearly unstoppable on a battlefield.
In 1112 CE the Evaniptus played a vital role in the subduing of the Yanme'e race. Infiltration teams equipped with active camouflage units were able to sneak in to the Yanme'e hives and neutralize the queens, sending the rest of the swarms in to a frenzy. Having lost cohesion, Sangheili, Mgalekgolo, and other Evaniptii would slaughter them. The assassins generally died in the ensuing frenzy.
===Discovery of the Flood===
In 1206 a small Covenant force comprised mostly of Evaniptii stumbled upon a Forerunner planet in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. There were a number of facilities that held Flood for experimentation, run by a single Forerunner Monitor AI; unaware of the dangers posed by the Parasite, the force landed and attempted to communicate. Half the force was slaughtered in seconds and quickly re-purposed their bodies. Within hours, only six members of the Evaniptii were left, and they hatched a daring plan. They had unwittingly fled in to the heart of the infestation and discovered a Proto-Gravemind sitting on top of an inactive Forerunner portal. As a last attempt at defeating the Flood, three of them made a suicide run on the portal controls, managing to send the Gravemind to a random location, which turned out to be an underground Forerunner facility in Antarctica. With the Flood combat forms now on top of them, the three warriors killed themselves rather than become infected. Their names were carved in the annals of Evaniptii once their final telepathic message was sent out. The other three returned to their capital ship and destroyed it, as the Flood had acquired multiple Covenant aircraft by then and were infecting the cruiser's crew. As the Gravemind communicated telepathically with its soldiers, the Evaniptii were able to glean some information from it. This information included data about a Forerunner super-weapon that could wipe out all life in the galaxy. While the three Evaniptii hid themselves from the Flood, they found a Forerunner database containing information to the Halo array, and the remnant whereabouts of humanity. They kept this information to themselves even after being found and rescued by a large Covenant force that came to investigate.
The three Evaniptii warriors that gave their lives on the planet were hailed as heroes, and the race was elevated to the point where the Prophets began to teach them about the intricate workings of the Covenant faith.
The Evaniptii made another mark during a short bout of fighting with the Kig-Yar in 1342. The Kig-Yar, who specialized primarily in ship-to-ship warfare, were unprepared for the teams of Evaniptii that were shot by pods on to the hulls of their ships. Not needing to breath, the Evaniptii do not need exo-suits or air, and thus were able to infiltrate the Kig-Yar ships with only their weapons and natural armor. Once they were able to enter the Kig-Yar ships, killing the crew became easy. Soon the Kig-Yar fleet had been all but disabled, and the race was forced to surrender.
===Fallout===
Unfortunately, there was an unexpected change of events in 1492. When the Covenant had assimilated the Evaniptii, they had not bothered to provide translation from the Evaniptii's language in to theirs. As the insectoids had only one language, there had been no need for translation among individuals. Therefore they had no knowledge of translating from one language to another. One particular Evaniptus, known in English as "Our Liberator," was the first to successfully translate the Evaniptii language in to that of the Covenant. With their relatively recent learning about a place called "Halo," he was able to deduce that the Halos that the Prophets spoke of were really the Forerunner super-weapons that the Flood had been apparently worried about. This information spread rapidly through the Evaniptii ranks, as they shared knowledge and ideals. There were only a few who protested, but they were quickly silenced.
When confronted with this information, the Prophets declared the Evaniptii heretics and began a bloody war. Since less than 1% of the Evaniptii race had ever fought for the Covenant, they were unprepared for the brutal attacks. They won several major victories in the beginning, but their fleets rapidly fell in to disrepair, and were destroyed by the far superior Covenant ships. The Kig-Yar and Yanme'e were only too happy to repay the Evaniptii in full for the damage the insects had wrecked upon their races. In a few short years the Evaniptii race was reduced from several trillion strong to a mere two million individuals.
In a final act of desperation, one million Evaniptii sacrificed themselves in order to allow the other half to escape. With a fleet of only fifty capital ships and many other small ones they launched an assault on the Covenant city of High Charity, engaging hundreds of Covenant ships. The Covenant won a Pyrrhic victory, losing three capital ships for every one Evaniptii ship destroyed. As these one million individuals engaged the Covenant fleets, the other million split up and fled into various parts of the galaxy, entering a deep hibernation cycle. The Covenant believe that the Evaniptii race was destroyed in that final battle.
===Hibernation and Return===
But they had their own plans to ensure their survival. Two of the three Evaniptii that had knowledge of the Forerunner database planned a future trajectory to Antarctica, Earth; leaving an activation buried at Sigma Octanus IV that could only be used by a human. They then entered hibernation with the rest of their species; when they were awakened, they could locate the survivors with a tier-1 telepathy device and reawaken them.
Category:AAO Species