Personal Faction Dossier: The Covenant (Contract Keepers)

Overview

The Covenant is the great machine that grinds in the shadows of the decaying old world, its gears lubricated with ink, threat, and legal precision. Where monarchs once commanded through blood and ****, the Covenant governs by contract, turning flesh, loyalty, and even pain into items for negotiation, exchange, and enforcement. They do not rule in the old sense, but neither can any power move without their sanction; their documents cross every border, their seals are recognized even by enemies, and their courts serve as the last, grudging consensus in a world that would otherwise collapse into endless war. Submission, here, is not a matter of will but of obligation, ownership is ratified in ink, disobedience punished by clause, not sword. No one trusts the Covenant, but none can afford to ignore them, and so nearly every faction, outlaw or noble, warlord or merchant, passes through their hands, compelled by the promise of order and the threat of legal ruin.

Origins

The Covenant arose from the broken faith of the old world, their ascent born not only in the vacuum of monarchic collapse, but in the ruins of trust, the failed promises, oaths, and treaties left in tatters by kings who could no longer command obedience or respect. They did not arrive as conquerors or redeemers, but as arbiters, answering the need for something incorruptible where crowns and bloodlines had rotted. Their founders were not warriors, but lawyers, clerks, disinherited nobles, those who understood that what truly bound civilization was not blood, but the written word, and the threat that came with breaking it. Their contracts became the new iron—clauses so unyielding, so intricately woven through every border and transaction, that to challenge them was to risk being cast out, ruined, or crushed by collective wrath. From their earliest days, the Covenant’s strength has rested in the certainty of their neutrality: they do not rule, but in the vacuum left by royal failure, every oath, bargain, and betrayal passes through their hands for judgment and enforcement.

The Covenant Today

Today, the Covenant’s presence is everywhere and nowhere. Their towers rise in every city’s heart, staffed by tireless scribes and contract drafters whose only loyalty is to the text itself. Their agents, the infamous Inkblades, haunt the land, cold, efficient, and unrelenting, reclaiming runaway assets, exacting penalty for breach, and enforcing compliance with a zeal that rivals any crusade. They are resented and needed in equal measure, the middlemen who keep the wheels of trade, ownership, and suffering turning. Their codes underpin every **** market and auction; their marks are found on every chain, every sale, every binding of flesh to master. What the Covenant decrees is law, not because they command it, but because everyone else agrees to let them. Their reach is total, but their authority is always contingent, forever one breach or rebellion away from collapse.

Inside their halls, law is sacred, identity a matter of registration, and value defined by compliance and performance metrics. A ****’s worth is a line item, measured and certified; a master’s rights are weighed and circumscribed by clause and subclause. The language of dehumanization has become routine: slaves are property, stripped of name and story, cataloged as functions in ledgers that stretch across continents. Training and retraining are no longer punishments, but contractual requirements, obligations that must be fulfilled to maintain ownership, privilege, or status.

Weaknesses and Limits

For all their pervasive reach, the Covenant survives only so long as their neutrality is believed, their authority respected by all sides. Their greatest strength is also their deepest vulnerability: every contract they enforce is rooted in the mutual assent of the factions, a collective agreement that gives the Covenant’s ink the weight of iron. They wield power not by fiat, but by being the indispensable referee, knowing that to tip the scales, to show bias, would unravel the trust that holds the whole system together. Their agents may enforce the rules, but the rules exist only so long as everyone plays along. In this sense, the Covenant is as much prisoner as master: bound by the same web of clauses and obligations they use to bind others. Their daily rituals, decisions, and even their ambitions are shackled by precedent and interpretation, each new agreement another layer of chains, forged willingly but impossible to cast off. In truth, the **** of the contract has become something greater than the Covenant itself, a living law that would persist even if its original architects were swept away. They hold the world together, but only because the world has agreed, if even a single, vital consensus faltered, their power would collapse overnight, and they would be left as nothing more than keepers of empty promises in a world that no longer cared to listen.

Personal Reflections

The Covenant is not an empire, nor a faith, nor a cause. It is the iron chain that encircles every wrist, the silent witness to every transaction, the cold promise that order, however brutal or dehumanizing, will always be enforced if the terms are met. They do not inspire love, or even loyalty, but they make the world’s cruelties possible, palatable, and above all, profitable. If this world ever ends, it will be with the last contract burned and the last clause broken. Until then, the Covenant will remain: the accountants of suffering, the keepers of the law, the only true neutral ground in a world that has forgotten how to trust.

Personal Notes