Covenant Update for July 29, 2024

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Welcome to this week’s playtest report for Covenant!

PLAYTEST FOR FRIDAY, JULY 26, 2024

We had to cut off this session early due to technical problems and one of our players not being fully up to snuff on the game rules. We still got some stuff done, though, and got some playtest data.

The player characters (PC) were still stuck in the swamps of Algol. Something picked off the risu caravan that they had been travelling with during the night and, as soon as the PCs woke up, they heard something stalking them in the grass surrounding them. They had the choice of facing whatever was out in the grass or the soldiers who had chased them out there, which turned out to be part of the valka Third Hand cult.

The PCs chose to fight whatever was out in the grass. I mean, it was probably just an animal or something, right? It couldn’t be that bad.

It was that bad.

It was inky blank, like it was drawing the light into itself, and huge. The PCs weren’t able to get behind it, as it seemed to go off into the swamp for miles. Meri the diplomat tried shooting it with her pistol, and Ceku tried lighting the swamp grass with his welding torch to burn it. Neither worked.

Luckily, one of the other valka the PCs were travelling with, Karu, produced photon weapons that would hurt it. This was supposed to be the start of a tough fight.

Unfortunately, this is when the technical problems reared their heads, and that, combined with the inexperience of one of our players, put the kibosh on that. So Sazzy made an executive decision to end the fight and have the PCs run away.

Later, when the PCs had set themsleves up in an inn, Karu gave everyone a history lesson. The thing that they found out in the swamp was from the Transit Era, when the valka were outbound from Earth and looking for a new home. There were stories of something taking over one of the valka worldships and causing violence and madness on it.

Karu was one of seven valka guardians (or he had one of the guardian’s personality, it wasn’t really clear), and they were able to sacrifice one of their own, named Tykatra, to seal it off. It became illegal even to speak the creature’s name, so no one knows what it’s called.

However, there have been sightings of the creature lately. The PCs’ encounter was just the latest of these. And each sighting is heralded by the Third Hand attacking hives and surface towns, as if driving the survivors in a particular direction.

So we know what the campaign is about. What we don’t know is who Karu’s traveling companion, the risu Rekana, figures into all this.

The technical problems we couldn’t do anything about. That’s an occupational hazard of having everyone living in different places and running your game over Discord. Sazzy said that they’re going to put that player through their paces this week to get them up to speed. We may have to include short encounters that allow Force Majeures to teach their players the system in the final rulebook. We’ll see how it goes.

PLAYTEST FOR MONDAY, JULY 29, 2024

We had to move Sunday’s playtest to tonight. It was intense and weirdly cathartic, with the PCs facing off against the 1999 Algol crisis creature again. However, it also ran late, so we’ll have to tell you about that tomorrow. See you back here!