Radio Free Covenant – A Podcast about the Science-Fiction Roleplaying Game "Covenant" and Urban Fantasy Novel "Crossing the Line"

If you like what you read here, please contribute to our Patreon. You can also join us for games on Twitch every Friday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

No playtest this week due to Easter, so let’s talk about the early history of the Covenant instead. This one’s going to be a short entry, but it’s important because of its consequences.

You can read our previous Covenant history entries here:

• Part 1: Revolution
• Part 2: Consolidation
• Part 3: The War

THE COVENANT – STARDRIVES

After The War, the calerre more or less settled into two blocs on Cadelle, with the Covenant and their allies on one side and a loose coalition of capitalist and authoritarian nations on the other. There was intrigue, there were wars, but Cadelle maintained this equilibrium as its technology became more advanced.

And with more advanced technology came more pollution.

Now, the Covenant has something called the “downstream principle”: what can you do if you live downstream of someone who’s polluting your water, like someone who owns a tannery or chemical refinery? This principle says that you can do something about it, even if that person isn’t making direct threats against you, because it affects you and your quality of life. It’s how anarchists like the Covenant can still act responsibly to others. They were able to control pollution and greenhouse gasses in their territories

The Covenant’s rivals didn’t have anything like that, though. They had environmental laws, but the agencies responsible for enforcing these laws these were mostly captured by the very companies and institutions they were supposed to police. Pollution and greenhouse gasses were out of control in these countries and, despite the Covenant’s best efforts, deteriorated Cadelle’s biosphere. The whole planet teetered on the brink of complete environmental collapse.

That’s when the Covenant made a discovery that would save the calerre: stardrives, or spaceship drives that could send a crew to other star systems. The Covenant didn’t want to abandon Cadelle, but they did know how their rivals thought, so the Covenant slipped their research into their rivals’ scientific programs and fooled them into thinking that they had discovered stardrives themselves.

The people leading the Covenant’s rivals knew that Cadelle was facing an environmental catastrophe, but they either thought that they couldn’t do anything about it or that dealing with it would be too expensive. That’s why they used “their” stardrives to build a fleet of starships and abandoned the dying planet to the Covenant.

That left the Covenant as the sole superpower on Cadelle, and they immediately go to work cleaning up the planet. It was touch and go for a while, but they eventually averted an environmental collapse and turn the planet into the paradise that it is today.

The Covenant’s plan did have a downside, although no one at the time would have thought of it: the descendants of the calerre who escaped Cadelle went on to found the Old Empire, the Covenant’s oldest foe.

That’s about it for now, though. If you liked what you read here, make sure to subscribe to our Patreon and tune in to our Twitch stream this Friday.

If you like what you read here, please contribute to our Patreon. You can also join us for games on Twitch every Friday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

PLAYTEST FOR MARCH 24, 2024

Sunday’s game was pure roleplay. Not much happened, but a whole lot of bombs got dropped into the story.

You might remember Suji, the lupine witchfinder from last week who joined the party. They started this week’s game by transforming into Mezumi, the chronomancer that the party had been looking for. They also stopped time, and since the NPC Temjin was the only other person who had the time stop ability (called “sidestepping”), they were the only person who was able to interact with them.

We’re going to be throwing a lot of names at you that you won’t know or understand now. That’s because they’re from Gaia, which is a two-decade worldbuilding project between Typh and Sazzy. Hopefully, we’ll be able to make this as painless for you as possible.

Anyway, in another timeline (which the PCs ended, long story), Temjin’s wife Aurora was killed by someone named Madura Masham, the leader of a Sagittarius Arm group of mystics and esoteric beings called the Centric Void. Our current BBEG Rekana is bad, but he’s nothing compared the Madura Masham.

How bad is Madura Masham? Well, you remember Baran? The old Khan of the ratel Khanate who was trying to take over the Sagittarius Arm and invade the Orion Arm? Turns out he was doing all that to stop Madura Masham. And now it looks like stopping him is the PCs’ job now.

Anyway, Temjin taught his daughter Rayney his sidestepping ability so that she couldn’t be killed. However, Madura Masham figured out a way not only to capture Rayney, but to convert him to his side. She’s now a power aspect of madness and an extremely dangerous foe.

That meant that the PCs were possibly facing three dangerous foes: Rayney, Rekana, and whoever Madura Masham’s agent on Gaia was. Mizumi offered to trap them in a bubble of stopped time while the PCs learned how to sidestep, but that would leave her defenseless. That’s where we stopped, with the PCs trying to figure out their next step.

It sounds like we’re coming close to the climax of the current story arc. Just how many sessions that will take is anyone’s guess. Like we said, Typh and Sazzy have a lot of lore to work through on Gaia, and they can throw a lot of that at us.

Luckily, we won’t be including Gaia with the basic rulebook. When we do, though, it’ll probably be the thickest book we publish.

Anyway, that’s it for now. We’ll update you next week on how Sunday’s session goes. In the meantime, subscribe to our Patreon and join us for game talk and streamed games on Friday on our Twitch channel .

If you like what you read here, please contribute to our Patreon. You can also join us for games on Twitch every Friday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

PLAYTEST FOR MARCH 17, 2024

Had a good playtest session on Sunday, or at least Sean thought so.

To recap, the player characters (PC) had landed on Gaia to find some way to counter the time-stop powers of Rekana, this arc’s BBEG. They’d entered an inn in the Shadowed Lands last game, and that’s where this session picked up.

Everyone bought rations and charms for the journey. Rekka the risu opened a pouch to pay for it, and the whole inn went silent. Then they started to close in on the PCs.

Rekka had the foresight to see if there was any esoteric energy – basically, magic. It was off the charts. The innkeeper turned into a jester, and suddenly the fight was joined.

The jester – who the PCs learned later was manifestation of Admanadreaux, the god of insanity – kept casting illusions and trying to get the party to fight each other. It got to Tweak the aco, who tried to eat the muzzle of someone else’s rifle. Finally, Sazzy the ratel got fed up, grabbed the jester, and did her best to pummel him into a fine red paste.

When the fight ended, the PCs found themselves in the ruins of a long burned-out and abandoned inn. A white folike lupine witch hunter named Suji filled them in on what happened and then offered to tag along. That’s where we ended the session.

It’s nice that we’re getting back into action-packed sessions. We’ve had plenty where there was lots of roleplay and hardly any interaction with the rules. It’s nice to know that you can play the game that way, but we didn’t get much playtesting information out of it. Now we are.

If everyone’s schedules line up, we’ll be playtesting again on Sunday. Sean and Sazzy will also be streaming on their Twitch channel on Friday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern, 7:30 p.m. Pacific. If we don’t talk to you on Twitch chat then, we’ll talk to you again next week

If you like what you read here, please contribute to our Patreon. You can also join us for games on Twitch every Friday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

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.

If you like what you read here, please contribute to our Patreon. You can also join us for games on Twitch every Friday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

So, the player characters (PC) finally saw some action this weekend, and it was more than they were had hoped for.

As a recap, the PCs were headed for the planet of Gaia to find a way to counter this arc’s main villain: Rekana, the owner of Rekana Industries in the Archimedean Confederation. He can stop time during a fight, which makes him almost invincible, so the PCs’ number one priority was to find some way to shut that ability down.

Their ship the Infinity was nearing Gaia when they started getting reports of Rekana ships attacking the valka Matriarchy, where they’d just come from. Attacking the Matriarchy is a suicide mission, even for a company-state as big as Rekana Industries. The PCs finally deduced that the attack was some kind of diversion, but for what?

They found out when the Infinity finally entered Gaia space and found itself surrounded by Rekana warships. Rekana had been tracking them through malware installed in the cybernetics of two of the NPC acoes, Tweak and Sarah. Tweak tore off his cybernetic arm and Sarah managed to flush the malware out of her systems, but it was too late by then.

Tweak, Sarah, and Rekka the risu vanished one-by-one from the room, which is how the PCs knew Rekana was on the Infinity. It looked like it was going to be a party wipe until Carver the valka managed to land a hit on him.

The tide turned for a bit, with the PCs landing solid blows on Rekana. It looked like he was up against the ropes until he hacked into the ship’s gravplates and turned up the gravity. It didn’t seem to affect Rekana, but it did affect the PCs, as they fell to the deck one by one.

Again, it looked like the session was going to end with a total party kill, with the PCs unable to do anything against Rekana. Somehow, though, Tweak managed to get up and stagger over a terminal. Everyone either saw it was the airlock controls or grabbed on to something when they saw everyone else do it, which is how Rekana wound up being the only person blown out into space.

The session ended with the Rekana fleet in retreat and the whereabouts of Rekana himself unknown. We’re not so foolish as to think hard vacuum and a re-entry fall could kill Rekana, so he’ll probably be back. With any luck, though, the PCs will be better equipped to handle him when he shows himself again.

Anyway, that’s it for now. We’ll let you know how this Sunday’s playtest goes next Monday. Talk to you then!

If you like what you read here, please contribute to our Patreon. You can also join us for games on Twitch every Friday at 10:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Welcome to this week’s free post for Covenant!

FEB. 11, 2024 PLAYTEST

Not much happened at Sunday’s playtest. But our player characters (PC) were still reeling from Rekana’s attack on the Infinity, so it was understandable.

If you don’t remember, Rekana, the CEO of Rekana Industries, decided to deal with the PCs himself after they nuked his scrapping site on the planet of Sujimma. One of the crew, an NPC nozumi named Temjin, managed to fight him off, but not before he caused a lot of damage and killed a lot of people on the Infinity.

One of the people that Rekana attacked was Sazzy, the Great Khan of the ratel Khanate and the PCs’ main pilot. He bit her on the neck, but it seemed to be a survivable wound. However, we learned on Tuesday that she didn’t have any brain activity. We ruled out the medical reasons, so our conclusion is that Rekana did… something to her.

The PCs’ position frankly looks pretty grim. Temjin told them that he could teach them how to speed up time the way he did to fight off Rekana, but he added that’s it’s very taxing on a fighter’s body. Other than that, though, we have no counter to him.

On the positive side, we greeted two new characters into the party on Sunday. The first character, 3131, was a leonile aco who fought Temjin to a standstill. He was an assassination weapon left behind by Rekana. But it also looks like he was being controlled by an implant, one that was primed to explode if he was defeated. We got it out of him, and now he’s eager to help us however he can.

The second was a risu named Rekka. The PCs are currently in valka space, and since the risu have a symbiotic relationship with the valka, they gave us access to some of their risu experts. Rekka is apparently the mystic of the bunch, and she’s just as eager to kill Rekana as the rest of the party.

That’s about all that we were able to do on Sunday. Hopefully, the playtest gods will continue to be kind to us and let us run another session this Sunday. If they do, we’ll update you next Monday.