Minister of Etiology

Legate: An official emissary, especially an official representative of the pope.[1]

This character is introduced in the Halo Graphic Novel when Rtas 'Vadumee's battle group boards the Infinite Succor. He appears to be Minor Prophet and is called the Minister of Etiology.

In Context

You see the Legate when Rtas 'Vadumee boards the ship and realizes that something is amiss. When they head into a hunting preserve there are Flood infected animals that begin attacking the group. The group fights its way through to the ship's bridge, where they find the controls have been disabled.

Here the Prophet is introduced when we learn that he has disabled the controls, including the self-destruct overrides. The Prophet requires the group be medically examined before he meet with them, for fear of Flood infection.

Once medically cleared, the group meets with the Legate in a secret location on the ship, and they devise a plan to get off the ship and have it destroyed. During this time it is made known the Flood quickly learned the access codes of the ship, once they infected one of the Elites. As they continued to infect those on the ship, they learned where the bridge and engineering rooms were, and the Flood are now held up in the engineering room. They are getting ready to make a slipspace jump to escape the system.

The Legate is eventually absorbed by the Flood but not before Rtas 'Vadumee sets a course to slipspace into the sun. It was here that Rtas 'Vadumee, while fighting the infected Elite Kusovai, loses his lower-left mandible to an energy sword. Rtas manages to escape the Infinite Succor two minutes prior to the doomed slipspace jump, and is apparently the only survivor of the mission.

Half-Jaw (Rtas) goes on to become the leader of the Covenant Special Forces in Halo 2.