Covenant Update for March 11, 2024

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Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

Not too much happened at this weekend’s playtest. There was some roleplay, but all the player characters did was land on Gaia and then make their way into the Shadowed Lands to start their training against Rekana. To make up for that, we’re going to go a bit more into the early history of the Covenant for you.

You can read our previous Covenant history entries here:

• Part 1: Revolution
• Part 2: Consolidation

THE COVENANT – THE WAR

After the Covenant consolidated themselves, they started to slowly expand into neighboring regions. They did this through a combination of clandestine agents and homegrown movements emulating the Covenant.
The existing governments in these regions – which, remember, were still in an era equivalent to Europe’s medieval period – did their best to stop the Covenant’s spread, mostly through crackdowns and violence. All they could do was slow the Covenant, though.
Finally, a coalition of these nations known as the Shining Alliance agreed to begin a war of extermination if the Covenant took over the Shashenne, a region known for its merchants and its sailing expertise. Letting the Covenant control the Shashenne would give it access to the region’s merchant fleet, which it could use to spread its political message further, and allow it to strangle trade in that part of the world.
The Covenant did indeed take over the Shashenne, and the Shining Alliance made good on their word and declared war on them.
Historians call this war the War of the Alnulvinne, after named after the part of the planet where most of the war took place and that included World’s End, the Rethenne Lowlands, and the Shashenne, the Covenant’s territory at the time. However, calerre still alive from that time simply call it the War.
The War was the first worldwide conflict on Cadelle. It lasted 106 years, and it eventually dragged in most of the planet. Most of the nations involved were just as authoritarian as the Shining Alliance. However, many of them also were rivals of the Shining Alliance, and they supported the Covenant.
Cadelle’s technology advanced by leaps and bounds during the war, with the Covenant pouring everything they had into research and the Shining Alliance capturing or stealing their technology, then reverse engineering it. The calerre started the war with swords and bows and ended it with machine guns and trench warfare.
The War exacted a terrible price on the calerre, but the Covenant eventually managed to wrest something like victory out of it. They still existed, and the tyrannical behavior of their allies and the Shining Alliance let them spread further. Everyone was exhausted by the war, though, and Cadelle fell into a stalemate between the Covenant and their opponents.