"The Covenant Progeniture is a grand social experiment: what if we combine the worst parts of an unbound eugenics program with the madness of an all-powerful AI? Then we throw in a dash of religion, ban any sort of fundamentalism that might actually for once bring some stability, and amp up aggression? The schizophrenia of the Covenant cannot be understated, and when hostilities cease between Neo Humanity and the New Economic Block I imagine war with the Covenant is next on the agenda. I can only hope they let me go soon." ~Doctor Beryl Benjamin
The Covenant Progeniture is classified as a Wildcard Polity in the Orion Exodus Solidarity. The Orion Exodus Solidarity may not rest easy with the Covenant panting at their borders, but they at least know that the Covenant loathes the 'genetically sterile' New Economic Block more than anything else. The OES can always count on a Covenant fleet joining in on any raids on NEB space.
The Covenant Progeniture has a sizable fleet, mostly stolen during the opening salvos of the Perseus War in a dark reprise of the initial Exodus rebellion. They've been known to trade their own offspring, beautiful custom-made slaves, for enhanced weapons and mercenaries.
Their existence has been traced to the beginning of the Orion Exodus by their own scholars and their leader, Bondless Mekong, who claims to be the founder of the polity. Modern scholars trace their beginnings to a pacifistic Old Earth religion that persisted throughout the Exodus, albeit in small numbers. After the fleet splintered, the group that would become the Covenant Progeniture fled as far away from the conflict as they possibly could. They eventually colonized a small pocket of space on the fringes of Orion Spur. Their worlds were marginal at best and most of them survived only in domed colonies. Soon they became proficient at surviving in these conditions and somehow even began to thrive. They spread throughout the region, settling the worlds nobody else touched. These 'Interstice Worlds' would play a pivotal role in the creation of the modern-day Covenant Progeniture.
The exact date of the Perseus Schism is unknown. What is known is that the pacifistic fundamentalists of the Covenant religion were ruthlessly overtaken and slaughtered by a radical branch of the religion. The new religion combined a wide variety of pseudoscience, crusading violence, and artful pseudoscience to first root out the heretics. The Interstice Worlds, once peaceful trading posts, were turned into crusade-provinces almost overnight. This led to the Perseus War, a concerted effort by the new Covenant to consolidate their worlds. The Perseus War was startlingly successful for the Covenant and made them a full polity overnight. They swallowed up a good chunk of the Perseus Arm within a year.
The Covenant is a full-blown radical theocracy, ruled by the supposedly-immortal and never-seen Bondless Mekong. It is almost certain Bondless Mekong is a powerful AI manipulating the theocracy. Every few years the Covenant spasms as Bondless Mekong plays a new splinter group against another, absorbing the strongest parts of the newest radical into the Covenant, giving the theocracy monstrous hybrid strength.
The current tenets of the Covenant preach the power and sanctity of 'living' blood, and they prohibit any and all violence against the 'living'. Their definition of 'living', however, is vastly different from any sane point of view. One is only truly 'alive' if they have taken part of the Covenant, a holy rite involving the consumption and transfusion of a homeopathic solution containing Covenant blood. Further holy rites decrease the dilution rate of the solution and add mutagenic retroviruses that carry genetic data from multiple GLAs, human races, and other sources. The ideal Covenant member is thus a GLA-Human chimeric hybrid, a form all but impossible for a modern-day convert. Instead these mutagenic properties persist to the next generation, hence the famous Covenant verse 'We are the future blood of our descendants'.
Nobody knows the end result of Bondless Mekong's crazed eugenics program. Some believe it's for fun, others that it's a grand social experiment by a malfunctioning AI, others that each citizen is individually tracked for schizophrenic purposes, and others that Bondless Mekong seeks to create a race that can survive in the void indefinitely.
Recreational sex is frowned upon in the Covenant. Every Covenant citizen submits to yearly genetic sampling, their DNA analyzed for novel mutations and relentlessly indexed. Sex therefore becomes procreative and even then only at the whims of Bondless Mekong, who organizes vast yearly mating-ceremonies. It is not uncommon for substantial inbreeding to occur, the better to isolate desired genetic traits. This is still the exception rather than the rule. Freelancers who join the Covenant in the hopes of some orgiastic religious sex are almost always disappointed. Dark rumors abound that the Covenant has been known to surreptitiously infiltrate genetic library data from other factions, identify 'interesting' targets, abduct them, and then conduct vile procreative experiments to make use of their desirable genes. Usually these rumors are the fever dreams of perverted writers, but where there's smoke, there's usually fire.
We are the Future Blood of Our Descendants
Type
Geopolitical, Theocracy
Demonym
Covs, Progens, Paths
