Cabal

The Cabal are a highly militarized alien species which has taken control of the planet Mars. They are notorious for destroying entire planets simply to save time rather than piloting their ships around them.

History
Thousands of years ago the Cabal were originally jointly ruled by the Emperor and the military aristocracy known as the Praetorate. However when Emperor Calus came into power, he believed that the Praetorate was corrupt and abusing their powers, for they controlled citizenship to the Cabal Empire to the exiled Legions. In addition he was dissatisfied of how the Cabal were becoming a war-like race.

Seeking to reform the empire, Calus stripped the Praetorate of their powers and redistributed their wealth to the people and granted full citizenship to its wayward warriors. The disgraced Praetorate believing Calus's methods were weak, schemed to overthrow him.

The Consul, a high ranking member of the Praetorate, selected a Cabal runt name Ghaul training him to become their weapon of revenge. By the time Ghaul came of age he lead the Red Legion, the Cabal's greatest army. Calus planned to liberate the Psion race that his people enslaved millennia ago however his plans never came to be due to the coup launched by turncoats and Ghaul. Calus was exiled to wander the galaxy and the Cabal under the leadership of world and even systems were razed in the name of the empire, acts which Calus had seen was too costly and a betrayal to the Cabal way of life.

The Cabal made their way to the Sol System where they learned of the Guardians and the Traveler. Due to the Guardians powers of resurrection, the Cabal forces refrained from a full scale invasion of Earth until a countermeasure could be developed. For some time, the Cabal maintained an exclusion zone on Mars, where they became locked in a brutal stalemate with the Vex. When the Taken King Oryx invaded the Sol System to avenge his son, the Cabal garrison on Phobos was converted into Taken by the Hive god. In an act of desperation, the Cabal of the Skyburners legion crashed their ship directly into Oryx's Dreadnought, enabling them to board and invade the massive ship, only to be killed or corrupted into more Taken. Before the Cabal were destroyed an encoded message was sent back to the empire requesting help.

The message eventually reached the leadership of the Cabal, which led to the Red War, where Dominus Ghaul launched a surprise attack on the Last City, successfully capturing the Guardian's home and sealing the Traveler's Light. Initially, Ghaul sought to claim the Traveller's willing support for the Cabal, capturing the Speaker and interrogating him on the criteria of how Guardians are chosen. However, when the Consul murdered the Speaker, Ghaul killed the Consul in anger and claimed the light by force. However, despite gaining powers similar to the Guardians, Ghaul was bested by the one Guardian who retained their light and was killed by the Traveller itself, shattering the Red Legion. When Ghaul was defeated, Calus returned from his exile to reclaim his throne and offered the remnants of the Red Legion a place in his loyalist camp. However, Calus had changed considerably from his previous benevolent self before his exile. He had become a gluttonous, hedonistic sloth obsessed with Opulence, even going as far as to attempt to harvest the planetoid Nessus in order to make wine from its soil. This change in Calus is believed to have resulted from an apparent encounter he had with the The Darkness, leaving him to conclude that the universe was doomed and to take as much pleasure as possible out of however much time he still has left before the Darkness' ultimate victory. When the Guardians failed to eliminate Calus, instead fighting a robotic decoy, Calus employed the Guardians in ensuring the security of his Leviathan starship, such as by neutralising a Vex incursion onboard, eliminating a Hive infestation summoned by a Darkness-worshipping Cabal corrupted by the Crown of Sorrows, and even saving Calus from an attempted assassination from remnants of the Red Legion.

When the Guardian Warlock Osiris developed the sundial, a means of altering time itself using Vex technology, four Psion sisters from the Red Legion attempted to use it to change the outcome of the Red War. They failed, resulting in the deaths of three of the sisters and the return of the long-lost Titan, Saint-14. Seeking revenge, the fourth Psion sister plotted to destroy the Last City by seizing control of the Almighty, the Red Legion's flagship, and directing it on a collision course with Earth. However, with the aid of the warmind Rasputin, the Guardians succesfully destroyed the Almighty as it entered Earth's orbit.

During the Red Legion's continued efforts against the Guardians, the Cabal found a new leader in Caiatl, daughter of Calus and new empress of the Cabal. However, her reign was short-lived when the Hive, under the command of Xivu-Arath, invaded the Cabal homeworld Torobatl. The Cabal were forced to flee as the Darkness claimed their planet, leaving Caiatl with little choice but to travel to Earth and seek help from the Guardians. In meeting with Commander Zavala and Osiris (or rather Savathun, Witch Queen of the Hive, impersonating Osiris), Caiatl proposed an alliance between Humans and Cabal, one that would go to war against the Darkness. However, in exchange, she demanded that humanity submitted to the rule of the Cabal, much like the Psions had before. Upon Zavala's refusal, a cold-war began between the two species, with Guardians clashing with Caiatl's war council in Cabal rites of proving. However, upon the death of Caiatl's champion on Nessus, the Empress agreed to a truce with the Guardians, with whom she had developed some measure of respect for after they had honoured Cabal traditions. Although the ceasefire was interrupted by a pair of renegade Psions attempting to assassinate Zavala, they were stopped by the Crow and Caiatl herself, who pledged to locate whoever was responsible for this treachery. With the conspirators executed, Caiatl declared an armstice between the Cabal and the Last City, whilst those Cabal who continued to maintain hostility with humanity would be declared renegades.

Culture
The Cabal are a highly militaristic society. The control a vast entire with legions that are sent across the galaxy to bring new worlds into compliance. Defeat in the eyes of the Cabal is unacceptable to their doctrine and would prefer to burn everything in their wake. Cabal legions are exiled from their world and the empire until their objectives are completed. However, they are a highly honour-bound society as well. Dominus Ghaul insisted on the Traveler giving its light to the Cabal willingly, refusing to take it by force except as a last resort, and was evidently furious when the Consul murdered the Speaker, a defenceless prisoner of war. Later, the cold war between the Cabal and Guardians was resolved by a rite of proving, ritual combat with Empress Caiatl's chosen warriors. Upon the Guardians' victory, the Cabal Empress not only agreed to a truce with Earth, but even protected Commander Zavala from renegades from the empire.

As a result of their conquest through the galaxy, the Cabal have absorbed multiple species into their empire as client races, either as willing vassals or conquered subjects. These client races include


 * Arkborn: beings of living energy residing in impossibly massive vessels known as Arks. Several were abducted and imprisoned by the former Cabal emperor, Calus.
 * Psions: a race of one-eyed psychics conquered and enslaved by the Cabal, but were later freed and made full citizens of the empire. Psions have been known to serve as auxiliaries in the Cabal legions.
 * Eliksni: At least one Eliksni, Sekris the Baron of Shanks, served Emperor Calus as one of his Shadow agents.
 * Clipse: A race of warmongers locked in constant war with their own homeworld's mutated ecosystem. They were conquered and absorbed by the Cabal empire, who incinerated their homeworld to conclude their undending struggle.
 * Sindû: a race residing on a gas giant, renowned for their excellent pilots. They were conquered by the Cabal, but granted a fleet of golden interceptors as a reward for their submission.
 * War Beast: non-sapient quadrupedal reptiles utilised by the Cabal legions as attack dogs.

Source

 * Destiny (2014)