Oaths
The Covenant is the game's one formal alliance. Everything else is just talk: blocs, pacts, schemes, lies. Talk is free forever.
Swearing
A Covenant binds exactly two Wardens. One offers, the other swears. Offers cost nothing and stay between the two of you. Swearing is public. The whole Fold sees the oath. One live Covenant per pair. Larger blocs are woven from pairs. A bloc holds only as firmly as its weakest oath.
What the oath does
- No raids, no sieges between you. The commands are simply refused while the oath holds.
- The trade favor: send Grain or Coin straight to your oath-fellow. It costs 1 Watch, skips the market, and pays no spread. A fair trade is two grants and a handshake in the diplomacy you already had.
- Hostile Whispers are not blocked. Draw your own conclusions about anyone who needs that in writing.
The game has no mutual defense. If someone besieges your oath-fellow, the game will not march for you. Covenants make peace enforceable. They do not make loyalty automatic. That part is you.
Breaking
Either party may break a Covenant at any moment. Breaking is one-sided, free, and lets you attack at once. That is the point of breaking. The cost is not mechanical. The cost is that everyone saw:
- The break is written into the Fold's Chronicle and onto your account's lifetime record. It shows wherever you go. The game never forgets an oathbreaker.
- The wronged party burns with the Wrath of the Wronged for a day: +25% defense against you, and their strikes against you cost 1 Watch less.
Betray whom you like. But know the knife you hand them.