# Character Creation Challenge 2024: Day 29 - Covenant :: Dolos, Self-Obsessed Corporate Shark tags: #thoughts/CharacterCreationChallenge/2024 #game/rpg/covenant > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2024]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] What if you threw an apocalyptic, end of the world conspiracy – and nobody came? If your entire life was built around being part of an organization who was absolutely certain the end of days was coming, down deep in your soul, the big day comes – and the day just rolls on, same as any other, what would you do the next day? And the day after? And the day after that? ![[Covenant (cover).jpg]] **[[Covenant]]** is the game that dares to ask the question. Many games have attempted to capture what being part of the conspiracy is like and every single one of them hinges on achieving your goals. What happens if you're wrong? The **Covenant** text opens with a rough outline of what Covenant (the conspiracy, not the book) is generally like. It's broken into three Orders, *the Crown* (political, economic, and social manipulation), *the Keys* (scholars and researchers – a lot of religious members), and *the Sword* (the original army of the apocalypse). The conspiracy members themselves are broken down into cells which are small groups that operate in a particular area and which may or may not actually talk to other cells – including ones nearby. It's your typical conspiratorial cell structure with the overseers usually being the ones, the only ones, who talk to anybody else about anything. Welcome to the conspiracy. There is an *inner council*, of course, because there's always an inner council, who used to decide world policy – right up until January 1, 2000 when the world steadfastly refused to end. That led to considerable amounts of confusion and parts of the conspiracy schism and often going in their own directions, which makes it really difficult to try and control the world. "Rogue cells"[^rogue]? Now there's a lot of them. [^rogue]:  Nikki Haley, is that you? Underneath the council are the *Masters* who are generally high-ranking members who've done notable things and got promoted for it, and incidentally jockey with each other to try and get appointed to the council if there's an opening. *Overseers* do literally that as regards a particular geographic area, report to the council, coordinate cells within their area, and bump a lot of elbows with other overseers. Oh yes, then there are the literal thousands of other "unofficial" factions and sub factions which have spun up and spun off over the last several thousand years of Covenant doing what Covenant does. Here you are, getting into all that. Good luck with that. Did I mention *there's no such thing as magic?* There's a lot of mystical belief – but no magic. No ghosts. No real arcane powers. The only real power is *real* power. Sure, the entire conspiracy has been propped up by prophecies and mystic pronouncements… But it turns out they're not real. Which way now, Western man? ## Chargen That's a lot to take in, I know. It's pretty intense. Not only is there a massive world-controlling conspiracy, it's all bullshit, and now what? Originally the game was intended to be set at about the same time it was released, 2006 to 2008, just long enough after the end of the world that never happened for things to really start falling apart but not so long that anybody had put it back together yet. While we could easily just set another Apocalypse Day (somebody, somewhere, has predicted that every day will be the end of the world), I'm going to say that for the sake of this character generation process, we are in 2006. **Covenant** isn't set up for solo or GMless play, it came along a little bit too early for that, but we'll fake it. ### The Cell The first thing that we need to do is put together our *cell sheet*, a bit of guidance on what sort of things we want to see in the game, what kind of things that are important to our group, and some hooks to hang things on. #### Fictional Elements To start, we need a couple of lists of things. *Conventions* are the sorts of things that happen in the fiction of the game. Things you might see, ways that the world functions, that sort of thing. They provide a kind of guidance to the Director of what kind of a story everyone wants to see. *Motifs* are more stylistic elements. One of the great examples in the book is "rain whenever pain happens". You know exactly what kind of a world you're dealing with when that is one of the motifs. Three or four of each should be fine. **Conventions** - Fruitful disorder is better than stagnant order - The old guard are not necessarily wrong - Covenant is much older than even it believes - Fruitful order is better than anarchy **Motifs** - Blood-streaked sidewalk gutters - Dirty deals in bright daylight - Endless meetings that go nowhere - A single gunshot Sometimes I like to play with some of the assumptions that go into media. And by "sometimes" what I mean is "pretty much constantly." The idea of a fruitful disorder being useful and better is pretty common but I wanted to set it against a narrative conceit of a functional order being better than anarchy, which is not an idea which is often kicked around. Sadly enough. In a similar subversion, explicitly saying that the old guard aren't always going to be wrong really will rub some people the wrong way. Then, just for jollies, suggesting that a several thousand-year-old organization is older even than that – I don't know where it goes but whatever falls out is going to be fascinating. The motifs are little crystalline pieces of scene come together. I've always been intrigued by gutters under sidewalks, and the Sin City-esque smear of bright red blood dripping into a black and white gutter is just such a good one. Doing the dirty work of the conspiracy out in the noonday sun is a complete subversion of what the usual conspiracy story goes for. Much like endless meetings that go nowhere aren't usually associated with conspiracies but, in my mind, seem perfectly at home here. Finally something more audio than visual, the idea of a single gunshot, the punctuation, the dot at the end of the sentence. #### Former Purpose Before the schism, this group was put together to do something. What was it? I like the idea of a cell devoted to *leverage*. No, not the TV show – though that would be interesting, too – but rather individuals who could apply pressure to anyone, political figures, businessmen, little guys who got in the way, or little guys we would like to get in the way. I think there are a lot of possibilities. #### Cell Name and Location Everybody has to be from somewhere, and that includes us. We're all about the leverage so we probably require a relatively large city to operate out of just to have enough targets. Someplace with sidewalks that can get bloody. Someplace with bright daylight (so Anchorage is out half the year). | Name | Location | | --- | --- | | Hartsfield's Nexus | Atlanta, GA | It's hard to get more sunlight on a regular basis than Atlanta, and Hartsfield International Airport provides the perfect on the nose reference and place to set up offices with ready access to transport anywhere on earth and all the security they could want. (I imagine that the actual operating offices of the cell are off of one of those – or a dozen of those – unmarked, only-numbered doorways along the long underground walkways between concourses. You could hide anything down there.)  #### Important People There's always individuals floating around who have some sort of importance to the story. This is where we throw them down. Sometimes literally. - Master LeMarchand, active member of the Keys and expert on prophetic riddles - not well thought of at the moment - Overseer "Selena Kyle" who has a clearly false name (like everyone else) but also dresses the part - Nathan Petrie, criminal loan shark, who always knows a guy who can do a thing ### Character That takes care of the cell and the broader elements of the story. Now we need to put together our character. There are enough elements on the table to make exploring what we can do with our own character really interesting. All of the moving parts are coming together. #### Concept It's short and sweet. Typical short phrase concept. You know, if we are going to do this conspiracy thing, I don't see any reason not to lean hard into it. Like, really hard. *Self obsessed corporate shark*. Lean *really* hard. #### Truism The world has literally just fallen apart around our character's head. We thought we were a big fish in a pond that was about to get a lot smaller. That is exactly the opposite of what happened. What statement of belief, one-liner, do we have hanging around that our life might affirm or deny conclusively? We need three of them. - Only the good die young. - He who has the gold makes the rules. - Peace sells; no one's buying. Not only are these interesting things to have proved in the course of play but they are interesting things to disprove in the course of play. Since it could go either way… I consider it all winning. #### The Crucible In the middle of the character sheet is a circle with sections marked off equidistantly: *Faction*, *Society*, and *Self*. Effectively this is a core relationship map which will build out connections which we can call on during the game. Characters toward Self are ones that we care about personally and who might provide a pressure against our Faction and the Society. On the outside of the circle in that area are the Truisms. The Society section are generally people who have the authority to give you orders from Covenant. They'll be asking things from you. Outside that area is where you write any current orders the cell has been given. The Faction area are for characters who are part of your Faction, official or unofficial. They could be contacts, they could be superiors, they could be anybody. They might want things that are not in the interest of Covenant or you, which makes things interesting. Outside the circle in that corner is where you write the faction's agenda for you, which probably puts you at odds with somebody else in your circle. Let me put something together real quick. We have some requirements to have at least one person in each corner, at least one person in between two sides, at least one person from the cell worksheet, and at least one person who is another protagonist or someone from their Crucible. That last one isn't going to be something I can do but… ![[Dolos, Self-Obsessed Corporate Shark (crucible).jpg]] - *Master Bertrand Yarrow* is our character's superior in the Soldiers of the Apocalypse and a well-known go-between for Covenant business and national interests. He also makes a lot of people very nervous. - *Master Crassus* is another member of the Soldiers and both my mentor and my rival, the latter in both business and relationships. It's complicated. Really complicated. - *Sister Georgina Pyle* is my sister. She decided to take up the cloth after being widowed. That will certainly make deciding where the family fortune ends up less complicated. She also may be banging Crassus. - *William John-Williams* is one of the lawyers that works for my company and is being courted by Covenant, who may be thinking of inducting him into the ranks. - Finally, *"Selena Kyle"* is the Southeast regional overseer with her own ideas about how things should run. Our Truisms we've already got down so I only need to put in our Faction agenda and Society orders. **Faction Agenda:** - Make sure Master Yarrow makes his connecting flight to Frankfort, *no matter what.* **Society Orders:** - Master Bertrand Yarrow is carrying information in a magtape in his luggage which could expose Covenant operations in Germany; *stop him by whatever means necessary.* Well… Fuck. No one ever said being a member of a conspiracy would be easy. #### Edges Here's your skills, your abilities, your descriptors, your traits – the things that give you an edge, which we will definitely and obviously need in a hurry. There's two kinds: *descriptors* and *relationships*. Descriptors are exactly what they sound like. Talents, equipment, money, positions of authority, etc. We get three. - More money than God - CEO and majority stockholder of Terminus Heavy Industries - Brutal cunning I don't think you can't get any more traditionally conspiracy-minded than that. He's a tech billionaire of a company whose name very well may have nothing to do with whatever it is that they sell, everything from tanks to toasters. He has a controlling interest in it and a seat on the board. Finally, he is a man of ruthless and brutal cunning as opposed to being cunningly brutal. The illuminati called; they want their everybody back. Relationships are intense connections to other characters, positive or negative. Link someone up like that and the Director will know they should be dragged in on a regular basis. Technically we could leave them undecided before we start and pull them in as we go, but we have to start with at least one defined. - Sister Georgina Pyle, Sister Of course, I had to take the relationship with his sister. Unfortunately for her, he doesn't like her very much. Not because she's a threat to him; if she was, he would've had her taken out years ago. No, it's because she is exactly the kind of person who would end up in the Keys, take all the religious garbage very seriously, and make everything worse. He hates her because she's a threat to Covenant and doesn't even know it. I'm going to leave the other two unspecified at the moment, but either or both of the Masters in the Crucible would be perfectly appropriate. Looking at the text, we can actually take those two edges as more descriptors instead of waiting to give them to relationships. I'm okay with that. Let's see… - **A certain criminal charm** - Despite being high society, gets on easily even with petty criminals - **Hate is a powerful tool** - Very good at fanning the flames in others and himself when useful, putting them out when not Weirdly enough, I'm starting to get sort of a Kingpin vibe off of him, which is not what I was expecting. I don't hate it. #### Consequences Old scores to be settled, bad habits, enemies you failed to kill, self-doubts, sometimes things just drag you down. Which is good because otherwise how would we know that we are better than others if we can't overcome our own adversity? - **Prince of a Thousand Enemies**^[Yeah, [it's a **Watership Down** reference.](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/34452-all-the-world-will-be-your-enemy-prince-with-a) You wanna make somethin' of it?] - Business is good and when business is good, a lot of others bear grudges And that's it for the character and for the cell. If we were the Director, we would also be putting together an antagonist sheet but… You already know if you're interested. Let's break out the good stuff. ## Character Sheet *I'm not going to use the official cell sheet, too many lines.* ### Cell *Hartsfield's Nexus*, Atlanta, GA **Conventions** - Fruitful disorder is better than stagnant order - The old guard are not necessarily wrong - Covenant is much older than even it believes - Fruitful order is better than anarchy **Motifs** - Blood-streaked sidewalk gutters - Dirty deals in bright daylight - Endless meetings that go nowhere - A single gunshot **Former Purpose** - *Leverage*. Individuals who can apply pressure to anyone, political figures, businessmen, little guys who got in the way, or little guys we would like to get in the way **Important People** - Master LeMarchand, active member of the Keys and expert on prophetic riddles - not well thought of at the moment - Overseer "Selena Kyle" who has a clearly false name (like everyone else) but also dresses the part - Nathan Petrie, criminal loan shark, who always knows a guy who can do a thing ### Character ![[Dolos, Self-Obsessed Corporate Shark (sheet).jpg]] ![[Dolos, Self-Obsessed Corporate Shark (portrait).jpg]] ## Exunt And there you have it, probably the best game for playing out conspiracies that exists. Bar none. The game mechanics are sweet. Set the goal of the conflict up front. If the other side doesn't care about you achieving it, don't bother rolling. Roll 3D6, everyone involved in the conflict. Take turns bringing your Edges into play, adding a die for each. Bring someone else's Consequence in and you can remove their highest die. Bring a Convention or Motif in and you can reroll any die on the board. Highest die wins. If there's a match, next highest die wins. If you win, you get to narrate how things play out. If your dice are higher than the opponent's result, you get to apply Consequences to them; the more dice, the longer that Consequence lasts. Boom. You're ready to rock 'n' roll. If you resolve one of your Truisms you can turn a Consequence that someone applied to you into a Descriptor Edge, which is awesome. You can use it to add a new Relationship Edge. You can give an opponent a Consequence that lasts for an entire chapter. This may be one of the earliest games I own which really leans hard on turning fiction-first impacts into mechanically reified functionality, and it really affected how I thought about games going forward. It's also one of those games that I've never heard anyone else actually talk about, which is a damn shame. Go pick it up, read it, study it, play it. If you do, remember that the best conflicts are between the characters at the table. I know that sounds paradoxical, but if you are a Director, your job is to push the characters into conflict with each other because then they get to manifest all of those connections which we share between one another and they start making a difference. Between this, **[[Hollowpoint]]**, and **[[FIST (Freelance Infantry Strike Team)|FIST]]**, you've got all the tools to cover emotionally evocative conspiracy, agents on the edge, and over-the-top action as a result of the choices and orders of all of the characters in the previous games. It could get really intense. If you'll excuse me, I have to go put on my black robe and go stand in a circle with a bunch of other guys I'm not sure I know while reciting something in Greek. It's weird. Out!