Legra 'Adantai

Race: Sangheili

Rank: Field Master of the Legion of Redeeming Vigilance, Huntsmaster of Templar’s Rest

Height: 8’ 2½”

Weight: 552 lbs

Age: 73

Appearance: 

As an ‘Adant clansman, Legra, like all his relatives, possesses a short and stocky build. Heavyset and deep-voiced, his body is closer to that of a predatory hunter rather than a dashing swordsman. His eyes are green, sharp and calculating—his skin his dark and slightly mottled with lighter patches, which extend to his neck. His many years of experience are written into his skin as scars and burns. These cover his entire body, although the only visible one is a line across his neck, describing the angle of a knife thrust.

It is the Zealot’s prerogative to wear customized armor; however, Legra has chosen to keep his armor relatively plain. He wears the standard glyphs of rank, Sect, clan, and homeworld written across his collarpiece—he wears no cloak, no jewelry, and the standard helmet. The only idiosyncrasy that sets him apart is that his Energy Sword is mounted on his left shoulder, rather than at his hip. This is because he wears his favored weapons, twinned curveblades, at his side. He also carries a mount for a Plasma Rifle at his right shoulder, where it can easily be accessed.

Strengths:

Patience, caution, and determination—these are Legra’s innate strengths. He has always had the untiring, constantly alert demeanor of a hunter. As a commander, these are very apparent—he analyzes the situation carefully, analytically—and acts accordingly. Recklessness is something he does not tolerate in himself or his subordinates.

He has also been blessed with an excellent judge of character—this may be his greatest skill. He takes care to surround himself with officers and advisors he trusts, and whose points of view complement his. He combines this with his caution to produce an intense form of loyalty among his soldiers—willing and intelligent obedience. He has never believed in unquestioning loyalty—he prefers unwavering loyalty—they can ask questions if they want. In fact, he encourages it.

As a fighter, Legra is well-rounded—it has been a necessity of his life. He began with a specialization for long-range fighting—as a hunter, he also tended toward hand-to-hand combat. However, as the years passed, it became more and more apparent that he needed not only to be good at one form of combat, but in all of them. Out of necessity, he has mastered the rifle, the spear, and his favored weapon—his twinned curveblades.

Weaknesses:

Legra’s strengths are his weaknesses. His patience is slowness, his caution is cowardice, and his determination is inflexibility. His tactics are by-the-book and uncreative, and often, dangerously predictable. Where another commander might seize the moment and daringly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, Legra will simply advance slowly and ponderously, trusting to his caution.

His “well-rounded” fighting method has also left him with little advantage or specialization. Many opponents have hidden reserves or special talents—with Legra, what you see is what you get. Although he has mastered many skills, these he has mastered by rote—he possesses no inherent ability in them, and is inadaptable, unable to handle unexpected situations well. Or at all.

  '''First Years '''

Young Legra was born to Sainan ‘Adant, a merchantwoman and Furas ‘Adant, a rather ill-fated hunter, on the quaint and peaceful world of Templar’s Rest. He was raised with the other children of his Clan, and brought up in the ways of the Clan ‘Adant—a small but prosperous tribe of hunters and explorers, whose founders had been pioneers and cartographers of renown.

Unlike many of his peers, Legra was able to see his father on a regular basis, indeed, it was his father, not one of his teachers, that first showed Legra the tricks of the trade of hunting—how to walk in the jungle, where to strike your prey, and when to leap and when to wait. This was because his father was a civilian—unlike other Sangheili males, Furas ‘Adant had never even tried to join the Templar’s Academy—the War Academy’s equivalent on that world.

Furas ‘Adant, as a young Sangheili, had entertained thoughts of becoming Huntsmaster of Templar’s Rest, an equally glorious and noble career as the military, without the life-threatening danger, and with far less likelihood of being injured. He was naïve in that—in his second year as an apprentice Huntswarden, he was gored by a ba’knwa—a moonbeast—and relegated to light duty thereafter, with his only chance at becoming Huntsmaster lost.

His father therefore became known as an embarrassment to Clan. However, out of courtesy, the Clan kept this information from his son, Legra, for they did not want to shame the boy so early in his life, when the boy still had so much to learn from his father, who despite being injures, was in fact an excellent hunter. So excellent, in fact, that despite years of recuperation and shame, he was to be made Huntsmaster after all, when the current Huntsmaster joined the military.

However excellent he may be, Furas ‘Adant simply could not catch a break—in a stroke of marvelously ill fortune, Furas was killed by another hunter who mistook him for a boar on his very first day as a Huntsmaster. There were whispers, of course, of an assassination, but the Hunstmaster that succeeded Furas was of the Clan ‘Drener, who were wildly known as being totally honorable and completely honest in absolutely all of their actions and dealings. Plus, they were rich.

With his father’s shame lodged in Legra’s mind, and with an incredible desire to be away from the small world of Templar’s Rest, Legra took the path of so many restless youths who seek glory—he joined the military.

Early Career

Legra forced himself to graduate the Templar’s Academy with honors—he had stressed over many a test in order to make himself into a warrior of potential and ambition. He had impressed his teachers with his effort, if not with his talent. While Legra was not born with ability, he instilled it in himself with patient determination. He also earned the distinction of being the first ‘Adant in three generations to graduate the Academy without getting a single lash of administrative punishment.

He began his career as a Minor Domo, in the dreadful dull task of overseeing Unggoy work teams as they constructed military outposts in what was technically a combat theater, despite being several miles inside their own lines. The nearest he came to seeing combat while thus employed was when an Unggoy had inadvertently detonated a barrel of mining explosives.

He was eventually put in command of a file of Unggoy as part of a security detail at the prison world of Fiery Limbo. There, he acted as a warden, which meant that although he was occasionally called upon to break up fights and help put down riots, he never really faced frontline combat until his Sect was reassigned to quell the Heretic Uprising.

Legra went on to command other lances, larger and larger ones, until eventually he was promoted to Major Domo and put in charge of an all-Sangheili lance—one of his Ultra’s bodyguard lances. There, he was privileged enough to see combat quite regularly due the Heretic Uprising. It was during this revolt that he took part in his first large-scale battle—the siege of a turncloak city. Legra had walked out of there with a brace of confirmed kills—victims of his Focus Rifle.

Legra maintained his rank for several years, as his creche had been going in and out of combat repeatedly, with promotions being of secondary concern to his survival. Eventually, though, he became his Ultra’s second-in-command and, for lack of a better term, his majordomo—his right hand. When his commander died, and another was promoted to his stead, Legra served him as well, to the best of his ability, building on his reputation as a trustworthy and reliable soldier.

The Sanctified Hunt

During a morale-boosting effort by the Covenant brass, the Sanctified Hunt of Templar’s Rest was opened to the military. Held every seven years (actually seven years and three days) at the conjunction of the seven moons, the Sanctified Hunt was the single greatest celebration of Templar’s Rest, when it became legal to hunt the ba’knwa, or moonbeast.

Returning at last to his homeworld, Legra nonetheless avoided his own Clan, choosing instead to hunt with other members of the military. It was here that Legra first met the names that would one day become famous—Til Je'at Vo'ha ‘Muramee, the General of the Sect of Lamenting Consecration, still unscarred, and Sorsa ‘Xirsasai, the enigmatic Special Operator.

Legra led his compatriots in the Hunt, and together, they did well, bringing down moonbeast after moonbeast. However, as is the way of Legra’s bloodline, the Hunt went sour.

A moonbeast Alpha’s poisoned quill impaled Sorsa, and the trio were forced to battle for their lives. Misfortune piled on and on—by slaying the Alpha, the three Sangheili had inadvertently called the moonbeast Queen down on their heads.

The Queen, a bioelectric behemoth, was only too happy to avenge her mate. Soon enough, the three hunters were battered and blasted into submission—until Legra, seizing the moment, used on of the moonbeast’s own poisoned quills to jab the Queen in the eye.

The Queen, blinded and enraged, frenzied. She struck young Til ‘Muramee with a forked bolt of lightning, searing in his now-famous scar. Til returned the favor by stabbing her in the throat.

By slaying the Queen, Til had completed the Sanctified Hunt. Legra gave him a tooth of the Queen to wear as a pendant, and claimed the Queen’s tail-spur for himself, to use as a curveblade. The Magistrate of Templar’s Rest awarded Til with the title of Great Hunter, and Legra with the title of Huntsmaster—finally restoring the honor of the ‘Adant Clan.

Afterwards, Legra returned to his Clan, and the current Kaidon named him his heir. While there, Legra took a wife, but spent only a few brief weeks with her before being called back into service.

Meanwhile, Sorsa ‘Xirsasai, with all the hidden cunning of his kind, vanished. Of course, he took care to leave behind a little gift—one curveblade for Til, and one curveblade for Legra, made out of ‘Xirsas steel.

The Unsorrowing Crèche

When Legra returned from Templar’s Rest he was finally promoted to the rank of Ultra, and put in charge of the Unsorrowing Crèche. Despite its tough name, Legra found the Unsorrowing Crèche in disarray, poorly disciplined, and sluggish. Legra took pains to restore it to functional condition, although he had to recommend the discharge of several Sangheili to do so.

However, his recommendations fell on deaf ears. The General in charge of the Sect of Righteous Clarity was lax and unhelpful, dismissing Legra’s complaints as the bellyaching of a new Ultra who does not yet understand that nobody really takes mandatory baths for Unggoy seriously. Legra angrily requested an extra week of training for his Crèche instead. The General grudgingly permitted it.

By the time he completed the refit of his Crèche, he had demoted most of the (ineffective) officers and troublemakers. The problem with this was he was left with timid and inexperienced officers. During his first skirmish with his new Crèche, however, he took pains to expose his new officers to the rigors of command. He taught them what his teachers had taught him—listen to your advisors. Trust a Kig-Yar in matters of stealth, and trust a Jiralhanae in matters of assault. Trust only Sangheili in matters of command. All war is deception—let your enemy know where to find you, but do not be there when they arrive. His most important weapon was this; ask questions of your commander. Do not blindly follow his orders—your input is also valuable.

The first full-scale battle the renewed Unsorrowing Crèche fought was amongst the forests of a Human world—Legra’s favored terrain. The Unsorrowing Crèche, well-trained and disciplined, maintained formation even in the dark and confusing labyrinth of trees. The rest of the Idvas Sect, poorly organized and rife with nepotism, was not able to handle the bewildering layout of vegetation. Of course, the Covenant lost that battle. It was folly to attack Humans in a forest they knew like the back of their hands, but the Unsorrowing Crèche escaped with only five percent casualties. Legra won glory for himself and his Crèche that day—no longer were the Unsorrowing Crèche called newbies and rookies behind their backs.

Capitalizing on the reputation he had gained out of the Battle of Screaming Trees—as the Covenant called it afterward—Legra petitioned his General to allow him to train the rest of the Creches in the same manner he had trained the Unsorrowing. In a fit of impotent rage, the General recommended that Legra be demoted.

However, when the recommendation for the demotion reached the Covenant bureaucracy, Legra’s superiors analyzed the situation with far more scrutiny than the General would have liked. They asked themselves why the Ultra they thought had so much potential had been recommended for demotion. They also asked themselves why the Sect of Righteous Clarity had been doing so poorly. After further analysis, they also asked themselves why it was that only the Unsorrowing Crèche had escaped with less than twenty percent causalties.

Eventually, they asked all of these questions, in great and tedious length, to the General. After hearing his testimony, and Legra’s, and a few of the other officers, it was agreed that he should be demoted, stripped of his swordsman rank, and Legra put in his place.

Which suited the grizzled commander of the Unsorrowing Crèche just fine.

The Sect of Confiding Muse

Legra returned to his Sect, and retrained them to the standards he had set with the Unsorrowing Crèche. Although this took the Sect of Confiding Muse out of circulation for more than a month, Legra considered it necessary, and his superiors agreed. Though the Sect of Confiding Muse had been the vigilant wardens of the prison world of Fiery Limbo, their training in front-line combat left much to be desired.

When the Sect of Confiding Muse completed retraining, they were shipped to the front lines of combat—the same system Legra used to retrain the Unsorrowing Crèche. However, this time, Legra intended to win.

The outer Human world of Havnor was to be glassed without any ground operations, however, the moon that orbited Havnor—called Roke—was the site of Human research operations, and thus a vital target that could not simply be destroyed. The task of capturing the research sites on the moon was left to a single Sect—Legra’s.

While the rest of the Fleet was engaged around Havnor, the single ship and its single Sect took on the little moon. The Sect of Righteous Clarity landed and struck, efficiently and effectively. The Humans put up a bitter fight, and a few of them attempted to destroy the research site, and deny the Covenant their prize. Thusly, although the Covenant outnumbered the few Human defenders on Roke, the battle was a true challenge—a race to see who could claim the research facility first.

Had the Sect of Confiding Muse been less well trained, less prepared, they would have botched the job. Legra had settled on a standard frontal assault, quick and deadly, and his leadership paid off. The Covenant was able to preserve around twenty percent of the research facility and the data it held before the Humans were able to destroy it.

While this was a tactical victory for the Covenant, it conveyed a totally different meaning to Legra. It told him his method worked—and he continued to train all his soldiers thusly. Two years later, after it became more and more apparent that the methods Legra used were effective, his method caught on. Many other commanders had taken his philosophy of “unwavering loyalty, not unquestioning” to heart and trained their officers by that principle.

Another year later, at the request of his superiors, Legra wrote a book entitled The Book of the Unsorrowing: Leadership for the Unintelligent Who Can’t Be Bothered to Figure It Out Themselves. He sent his draft to his superiors for publishing.

Later, he received a copy of the edited and recently published book, entitled The Book of the Unsorrowing. He also received a letter that advised him to keep his jests to himself and not waste valuable time fooling about. It also informed him that they thought the work was excellent and had put in on the list of mandatory reading for the War Academy.

In response, Legra sent the copy back with a lavish autograph on the cover, along with a handwritten note:

“What is leadership if not fooling about?”

Let it not be said that he has no sense of humor.

'''The Legion of Righteous Clarity ''' Legra spent nigh on a decade as the leader of the Sect of Confiding Muse, before the elderly Field Master that preceded him died of illness. As the most experienced and reliable of the Generals in the Legion of Righteous Clarity, Legra was raised to the position of Field Master, which gave him the signifying name "Ra'ha" as befit his rank. Legra was called to High Charity for his promotion, and there he was named ‘Adantai—the first since the founders of his Clan to bear that name. With it, he had elevated the social status of his Clan—after all, they were now blood relatives of a swordsman!

Legra, however, took the news with bitterness. Now, as a Swordsman, he had given up his wife, Lien 'Adant, who would now be “free” to marry. He knew she would not, but Leigr, the kaidon of his clan, would pressure her to marry again, to further the Clan's political status. Yes, he would have access to any woman he wanted—but never again would he be able to call the woman he loved his wife, and never again would they have matrimonial bonds between them. Many of his compatriots had considered this one of the advantages of swordmanship, but Legra considered it a burden.

Putting his own personal desires aside, Legra took firm command of his Legion, taking it to battle on the world the Humans called Xanadu. The Legion of Righteous Clarity was assigned the task of subjugating the groundside Human resistance, specifically, destroying the Onager Mass Drivers that prevented the planet from being glassed. Legra was successful in exposing most of the world to the Covenant orbital bombardment, but was stymied by the large concentration of Human materiel and weaponry on the eastern landmass of Caladan.

Eventually, after a massive strike at the Human stronghold, the Legion was able to expose Caladan to Energy Projector fire. With most of the population centers glassed, only a few remnant platoons of Humans put up any form of resistance. Legra was tasked with killing the leader of this resistance, which he did personally. This deed earned him the middle name "Je'at" in recognition of his achievements and personal bravery.

The Xanadu campaign drew to a close when Legra personally eliminated the Demon that represented the last of the planet's defenders. Although he lost a large number of warriors to the Demon's strength, Legra was able to shoot it dead, earning him the moniker "Demonslayer." This brought him to the attention of the enigmatic group known as Reticent, two of whom were already familiar with the grizzled old hunter. After passing a series of grueling tests, Legra was accepted into the elite circle.

The struggle on Xanadu had diminished the Legion of Righteous Clarity's numbers such that they were joined with other sects to form the newly-named Legion of Redeeming Vigilance. Thus, Legra took command under his old friend, Field Marshal Til Je'at Ze'at 'Muramai.

NPCs:

Ultra Domo Urenn 'Muramee: serving as the leader of Legra's personal guard and aide-de-camp, 'Muramee is quiet and solemn. Hailing from the enigmatic state of 'Muram, he is well versed in matters of stealth and close-quarters combat. As the ever-competent assistant, 'Muramee has built a reputation for opposing Legra's tendency to be predictable and over-cautious, serving as the dissenting opinion that calls out Legra on his mistakes.

 

  Sect of Confiding Muse-the Confiding Muse was once a steadfast sect for the prison-world of Fiery Limbo, one of the best to handle the mad prisoners and keep the gladiatorial games involved in complete control. However, an incident with a unknown cause have sunk its sanctioned prison under a lake of magma, but managed to survive. After a few unsuccessful stints in direct combat, they were retrained to combine their vigilant security withfront-line tactics and tenacity. In the unit’s reports, they are ruthless, inquisitive and most importantly, know how to complete a given objective with a hardy fortitude.   General Xhu Je’at Vo’ha ‘Wamikai-a former Ascetic, 'Wamikai is the leader of the entirety of the Sect of Confiding Muse, and has built its reputation for ruthlessness and vigilance. Under him, the Sect of Confiding Muse has turned its specialization of security into an equal talent for defensive tactics and thorough reconnaissance.

== students. Although Legra takes care to remain distant, he keeps an eye on Irdas, both admiring and encouraging his progress. As a result, 'Haidaree is under a lot of pressure to excell and live up the expectations of both his subordinates and his superiors.
 * Ultra Domo Irdas 'Haidaree-commander of the Unsorrowing Creche, renowned for his tenacity and the loyalty of his troops. Irdas is in many ways Legra's protege, one of his favored

tendency to procrastinate or stand idle, 'Feryaree is also a brilliant tactician. Graduating from the War Academy with flying colors, he was considered a prodigy, yet spends most of his potential in idiosyncratic hobbies, such as painting or riddle-making, which has earned him the ire of his superiors on more than one occasion. austere. A veteran of many battles, 'Sokalee has made the Vigilant Creche live up to its name. His soldiers are proud of their position and proud of their commander, and emulate his personality, choosing to be cold and aloof.
 * Ultra Domo Boro 'Feryaree-commander of the Hale Creche, regarded as being a bit of a layabout. Despite his
 * Ultra Domo Essa 'Sokalee-commander of the Vigilant Creche, one of Legra's old comrades, solemn and

 
 * Ultra Domo Yorin 'Geivanee-commander of the Purifying Creche, and a fanatic in the extreme. 'Geivanee is prone to preaching sermons before battle, and styles himself a modern-day templar. Fearsomely talented at interrogation, 'Geivanee is, for lack of a better word, a true Zealot, throwing himself into the task of rooting out heresy.