Covenant Update for December 4, 2023

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Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

PLAYTEST

We held another playtest in Sazzy’s Beyond Infinity campaign. We had a lot of exposition and roleplay this session, along with a few plot grenades, but no bids or gameplay. Looks like that’s coming next session.

The player characters (PC) met on the bridge of the Infinity, a giant spaceship that made its debut way back in Chapter 2 (we’re up to Chapter 4 now). Their efforts to take the planet below them from loyalists to Baran, the old Khan of the ratel Khanate, had been successful, and the Covenant were going to use it as a beachhead for their operations in the Sagittarius Arm.

The PCs were then introduced to a number of new species who, like the chiroptim, were from another timeline and had stumbled into the Covenant universe. They brought with them a number of advanced technologies, including a superluminal drive that didn’t need fixed facilities opening wormholes in space. The Infinity was going to need it for its operations against Rekana Industries, including their plans to evacuate the “Scrapping Sites” for outdated acoes and, eventually, to destroy the company itself.

Rekana seemed to be aware of the PCs’ plans, too. They were replacing people with doppelganger acoes loaded with the memories of the people they were designed to replace, then using them to carry out infiltrations and assassinations. One of them had already killed the Matriarchy’s Omnimatriarch. The Infinity had developed a test to spot these doubles, but it’s definitely something that the PCs will have to look out for in the future.

The Infinity made its first jump across thousands of parsecs back to Gaia in the void between the Orion and Sagittarius Arms. That’s when our co-writer Typh decided to throw in a plot twist: someone somewhere activated a Penrose sphere, killing billions. The Infinity was barely able to survive it, and Tweak the aco fell to the bridge deck, suffering from some kind of seizure and repeating the name “Madura Masham” in an ancient risu dialect.

We have no idea who or what Madura Masham is. However, judging by Sazzy and Typh’s evil snickering, we should probably be worried.

PLAYABLE SPECIES

Sean has written four of the five playable species that he has for Covenant. Last week, he finished the calerre, or the founders of the titular Covenant (you can get the character creation rules for Covenant if you’re a patron). This week, he’s going to work on the last of his species, the chiroptim.

The chiroptim are from another universe (actually, another roleplaying game that Sean abandoned) where anthropomorphic vampire bats evolved alongside humans. They came to the Covenant universe during an event called the Crossing and are unable to return to their universe, which they call the Old World.

Their main feature is that they’re predators and blood drinkers. They’re also one of the few playable species who can fly under their own power. Their hollow bones make them more fragile than other species, so they’ve compensated by developing a strong gun culture and traditions of hit-and-run fighting and guerilla warfare.

Sean has been taking about two weeks to finish the character creation rules for each species. The chiroptim are going to be one of the more complicated ones to write, because they’re split up into two major ethnicities: the Ya’os from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East; and the Tiükmad from Southeast Asia. Each one will have similar but different ability trees reflecting their cultural differences.

That’s about it for now, though. We’ll let you know how the playtest and the chiroptim are coming next Monday. Talk to you then!