Atriox (Earth-4001)

"I am not Tartarus or some fanatic. I am not Truth. I am not Regret. I am their remedy."

- Atriox

Atriox is the powerful Jiralhanae warmaster who leads the Banished, a violent faction of ex-Covenant mercenaries and rogues. He originally fought on behalf of the Covenant, but was banished after thwarting his own execution. A deadly warrior and brilliant military leader, Atriox inspired many others to join him in exile. He has led his followers for over a decade, during which time he amassed a large amount of ordnance and materiel, especially following the collapse of the Covenant Empire in 2552.

History
The history of Atriox is the same as his mainstream counterpart up until the end of the Human-Covenant War in 2553.

Personality
Vicious, cunning ,and brilliant, Atriox is a deadly warrior and the skilled warmaster leading the Banished. Atriox rose to power through fierce tenacity and shrewd strategic planning. He is highly ambitious, seemingly holding power for its own sake as his supreme value and motivation. Atriox is a versatile soldier, collecting and repurposing former Covenant military weapons, vehicles, and other equipment to allow the Banished to gain strength against other factions. In addition, he eschews the Covenant's reverence for Forerunner artifacts and has no compunction over taking control of them for his own ends. He holds an extremely pragmatic view of warfare and understands the importance of supporting infrastructures and how to build armies and structures cheaply and efficiently. Atriox's brilliant strategies are unconventional when necessary and imitative when efficient — for he will adopt whatever techniques and technologies he has to in order to guarantee victory. His use of Huragok and compact assembly vats in forward bases would have been considered unorthodox - even heretical - under the Covenant's traditional war creed, but those days are past.

Harboring a hatred of the Covenant and its remnants, Atriox seems to follow a philosophy of utter, amoral pragmatism, focusing solely on gathering power for himself and the Banished as a whole and ignoring whatever he cannot leverage as a useful asset. He is apathetic to the brutality and suffering that prevail in the Banished's ranks as long as he gains results, and has no attachment to faith, actively lauding it as outdated and needless. Likewise, Atriox has no animosity towards humans, nor does he care for the Sangheili-Jiralhanae feud. Atriox views both humans and Sangheili as warriors with potential usefulness to him; though other leaders would struggle to hold control over bitter rivals on the battlefield, Atriox's charisma and the fervor it inspires in his followers makes it possible. Of note, Atriox is also fluent in basic Sangheili.

Equipment
Atriox wears unique black and white combat armor, which is partially of United Nations Space Command origin. It is made from various pieces, including an ODST chestplate. He also dons an augmented power gauntlet which artificially enhances his strength to a significant degree. In battle, he wields a customized energy mace called Chainbreaker, which he created from parts of a Type-2 gravity hammer.

Trivia

 * Following the pseudo-Latin theme of most Jiralhanae names, Atriox likely comes from the Latin atrox ("furious", "savage"), the root of the English atrocious and atrocity. Notably, Atriox features neither the -us nor the -um suffixes present in the names of most mature Jiralhanae.
 * Atriox was originally going to appear in Halo: Silent Storm, but 343 Industries requested for Troy Denning to fill Atriox's role in the novel by Orsun in the second or third review.