Covenant Update for January 22, 2024

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Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

THE COVENANT

Life got in the way of the playtest this week. So, instead of updating you on the playtest this week, this post will be about the titular Covenant in Covenant. This is going to be a multipart post because the Covenant’s backstory is pretty extensive, as are those of the other “domains” or factions.

The Covenant was founded during a peasant revolt on the calerre homeworld of Cadelle about 120,000 years ago. Cadelle orbits Zeta 2 Reticuli, which is about 39 light years from Earth. Zeta 2 Reticuli is relatively poor in elements heavier than hydrogen, so Cadelle doesn’t have a lot of easily accessible metal deposits. Many of these deposits were in a region known as World’s End.

World’s End (now Star’s End) was an isolated region bordered by the towering Shoulders of the World mountain range in the north, south, and east and by the deserts of the Qoros region. Cadelle’s weather patterns have changed in 120,000 years, so Qoros is now lush farmland, the planet’s breadbasket. Back then, though, World’s End was geographically isolated from the rest of Cadelle.

It wasn’t isolated enough, however, for the Rethenne Empire in the neighboring Rethenne Lowlands to conquer it in order to control its precious deposits of iron and other metals. This is because World’s End was controlled by warring clans. Empires are good at playing divide-and-conquer, and that’s exactly what the Rethenne Empire.

Keeping control of World’s End was a full-time job for the Rethenne Empire, as the clans and various religous fanatics constantly tried to throw them out. None of these ever succeeded, however, because the region was still made of hostile factions. Everyone with any kind of power there was either suspicious of each other or on the Rethenne Empire’s payroll, often both.

THE COVENANT OF WINTERHAVEN

The Covenant was different, though. It was made of up peasant, religious and political radicals (lots of people were both), and bandits from across World’s End, along with political exiles from the Rethenne Empire. This group spent a hard winter in the World’s End village of Winterhaven, where they hashed out the Covenant of Winterhaven.

The Covenant of Winterhaven is the Covenant’s founding document, which lays out the rights and responsibilities that all sapient creatures must have to have a just society. Ideally, a Covenant community, known as a commonwealth, would be anarchistic and have no central government. However, the Covenant of Winterhaven does allow individuals to set up their own forms of organization, which often takes the form of some kind of government.

An important feature of the Covenant of Winterhaven is that commonwealths would be allowed to adapt to local political and defense conditions. In this way, it’s more like the U. S. Declaration of Independence than the Constitution. It doesn’t say how you’re supposed to organize public life but rather what you need to do to be considered part of the Covenant.

From Winterhaven, the Covenant’s founders spread across World’s End to spread the Covenant of Winterhaven. Many were imprisoned or killed, but enough survived to create a movement that would force the Rethenne Empire out of the region.

The Covenant succeeded where others failed because it was founded and run by the dregs of society: peasants, bandits, criminals, prostitutes, and beggars. They were able to create a cohesive force that superceded clan loyalties. In fact, the Covenant is why the calerre call themselve calerre. “Calerre”, a term used in the Covenant of Winterhaven, meant “being with a soul”, so everyone in the Covenant was a calerre.

It didn’t matter what clan, gang, or nation you came from. In the Covenant, you were a being with a soul, like everyone else, and that was most important distinction you had.

THE BATTLE OF LASHARRE PASS

The Rethenne Empire tried one last time to retake World’s End. The Covenant met their army at Lasharre Pass just outside the Shoulders of the World.

Calerre are winged and can fly over the lower peaks of the Shoulders of the World if they dropped everything they’re carrying. However, if you’re an armed and armored soldier who wants to go from the Rethenne Lowlands to World’s End, you need to use one of the mountain range’s few mountain passes. And if you want to get a column of soldiers, along with all their baggage, into World’s End, there was only a single pass large enough to do it: Lasharre Pass.

The Battle of Lasharre Pass has been described as a “reverse Thermopylae”, with a large force of peasant soliders defending against a smaller army of professional soldiers at a choke point. The imperial generals were confident that they would easily defeat an army of poorly trained peasants.

However, they underestimated the Covenant. The imperial army had a long march to Lasharre Pass, and the Covenant was able to evacuate any towns and farms along their path so that they couldn’t resupply, then harassed them, destroyed their baggage trains, and cut them off from resupply and reinforcements. The imperial army, starving and weakened, still almost managed to defeat the Covenant at Lasharre Pass – they were professionals, after all – but were ultimated routed.

The imperial army’s defeat in World’s End created a political crisis that led to the downfall of the Rethenne Empire. This gave the Covenant the time they needed to shore up their defenses and eventually become a major power on Cadelle. We’ll talk about that next time.