Te (Earth-5875)

Te is a gas giant and the fifth planet in the Svir system. It is the homeworld of the lekgolo. It has twenty-five moons, including Rantu, Uhtua, and Rentus.

Prehistory
The lekgolo evolved on the Te, in the Svir system. There, they developed during their thriving and prosperous consumption of the abundant metal deposits found on the planet's crust. The forerunners visited Te in the past, and they would futilely attempt to use one of their gestalts, the thanolekgolo, to combat the xenomorphs during their war against the endoparasite. Many of these thanolekgolo were cryogenically buried under Installation 04. The lekgolo were eventually cataloged by the Lifeworkers and sent to the Ark as part of the Conservation Measure. After the firing of the Halo Array, they were returned to Te, where they began rebuilding their culture.

Because of their natural ability to assimilate into larger forms and become even more intelligent, the lekgolo were capable of reaching Tier 3 technology. However, they were essentially stuck on their homeplanet duo to their incapacity of developing space travel technology on their high gravity homeworld. Not long after, many lekgolo started to settle in forerunner installations that orbited Te, where many started to consume the structures, while others did not.

Covenant discovery
The Covenant eventually arrived in the Svir system in 789 BCE, after a Luminary guided them to the planet. Soon upon their encounter, the Covenant discovered the lekgolo had been eating surrounding forerunner orbital facilities, prompting the Hierarchs to brand it an act of heresy and declare war against the lekgolo, which became nown as the Taming of the Lekgolo. While the Covenant easily outmatched the species in orbital engagements by simply bombing Te's surface, the Covenant's Fleetmasters discovered that attacking could result into the destruction of the forerunner relics.

Upon fighting on Te and its moons, the sangheili found themselves outmatched against the lekgolo, which could combine into major gestalts to fight the alien invaders, must commonly the mgalekgolo, which were easily able to kill the sangheili warriors. The ferocity and numbers of the lekgolo was enough to send fear to the Covenant, and so the Hierarchs named an Arbiter in order to "tame" the lekgolo and enslave them as one of the Covenant's species. After the Arbiter spent one whole year studying his foes, an agreement was eventually made between the san'shyuum and the lekgolo, who then joined the Covenant as its first non-founding species.

By 2552, trillions of lekgolo still called Te their home, and were sent rations and armor to be fielded into the Covenant Armada.

Topography
Te is a massive and ringed blue gas giant, having an atmosphere comprised of nitrogen, helium, and methane. It is the fifth planet orbiting the blue star Svir, and has twenty-five natural satellites, including Rantu, Uhtua, and Rentus. The local temperatures range from -20°C to 95°C (-4°F to 203°F). Its atmosphere is gaseous and thick, with large concentrations of rare metals and alloys lying at its orbit, which serve as a source of food for the lekgolo, while most of these who were of forerunners were taken from the planet and sent Te. Non-natives rarely go visit the planet because of its crushing high gravity.