Covenant Update for June 17, 2024

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Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

No game this week. Sean and Sazzy both had personal business that kept them from playing. So instead of writing up a playtest recap, we’d like to share with you the Covenant’s second contact with humanity.

You can read our previous Covenant history entries here:

• Part 1: Revolution
• Part 2: Consolidation
• Part 3: The War
• Part 4: Stardrives
• Part 5: First Contact with Humanity
• Part 6: First Contact with the Thk’kok

COVENANT – SECOND CONTACT

As we previously mentioned, the Covenant had already made first contact with humanity, and it had gone disastrously. The Covenant then decided to withdraw and watch humanity. Instead of jumping feet first into a “second contact”, they decided that they would learn as much as they could about this strange species and only make themselves known to Earth when the time was right.
This is what they did for over 120,000 long years.
There were a lot of disappointments during this time. Humanity gave the Covenant plenty of chances to make contact, only to ruin them by their subsequent behavior. One of these was the end of World War II, when it seemed that the world had banded together to defeat fascism. However, it became quickly apparent to the Covenant that the Cold War and the subsequent years after it were just a realignment of old imperial structures, with humanity constantly coming up new and exciting ways to oppress themselves.
All during this, humans kept polluting the environment and warming the climate. It got so bad that, by the first quarter of the 21st century, the Covenant despaired of ever making contact before humanity drove themselves to extinction.
Then things started to change on Earth.
After another brief and frightening flirtation with fascism, humans started kicking out the old leaders that had gotten them into their mess and started fixing the myriad problems facing Earth. The empires started to crumble around the edges. People started working together to improve the world and, most importantly, clean up centuries of industrial pollution.
The Covenant scientists watching humanity finally sat up and took notice.
In 2058, during the World Cup – the most televised event on the planet – the Covenant finally revealed themselves to humanity. Again. Their ships appeared above the pitch where the finals match was held, along with over every capital city on Earth.
The Covenant wasn’t offering Earth entry, not yet. Despite recent events, it just wasn’t ready. However, human society had advanced to a point where they would be able to join the Covenant in the near future, if they wanted to. And the Covenant was there to help make that happen.
Almost immediately, Earth split into three factions. There were the old imperial powers. There were nations who, with varying amounts of enthusiasm, adopted the Covenant of Winterhaven. Finally, there were nations who took advantage of the confusion to break away from their imperial masters but who refused to join a bunch of outsiders, choosing instead to go their own way. Much of the second and third factions were made up of nations from Earth’s Global South, but there were joined by neglected cities and provinces within the great powers of Earth, as well.
As you can imagine, reshuffling Earth’s power balance like this led to a lot of conflict and war. However, the new commonwealths on the planet had whole planets of support to draw from, so they were able to defend themselves from relentless onslaughts. The Covenant of Winterhaven slowly spread across the planet, if only because Earth’s commonwealths were able to keep their freedom and help other nations in need.
And that’s how things stood until the next big thing happened. But that’s for later.