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Covenant of Primus
Conceptual history
While the Covenant of Primus in its known form made its debut in the two-part series finale of the Beast Wars cartoon, the name "Covenant of Primus" has its roots in a prose story written for BotCon 1999 that was first released several months in advance of both the convention and the Beast Wars finale. Titled "Covenant" and written by Simon Furman, this story introduced a group of twelve ancient Transformers first created by Primus before the rest of the Transformer race (a concept Furman would later recycle for the Thirteen Original Transformers). Simply known as the "Covenant, this group was charged by Primus with observing from afar the development of the Transformer race on Cybertron, and to prepare for an apocalyptic battle known as Point Omega, which would decide the fate of Primus's Grand Plan. A second story, "Schism" would further reveal that the prophecy of Point Omega was described to the Covenant in their "scriptures", no doubt a reference to the following.
The Covenant of Primus as a religious tome was first established in the aforementioned two-part Beast Wars episode, "Nemesis Part 1" and "Nemesis Part 2" (the latter of which was likewise written by Simon Furman), in which portions of its text were quoted by both Optimus Primal and Megatron to interpret the events of those two episodes (and the preceding one) as correlating to preordained events described by the Covenant. The Covenant tome and the Covenant group would be further connected together in the BotCon 2001 online prose feature "Apelinq's War Journals, in which the time-displaced Maximal Apelinq would observe the Beast Wars from afar and, during the events of the BotCon 2000 comic story "Terminus", would refer to both the tome and the group as the "Covenant of Primus". Ultimately, the Covenant of Primus would be depicted as a religious tome in all of its future appearances, while the Covenant group would be supplanted by the better-known Thirteen.
In 2010, Hasbro's then-new Aligned continuity family would give greater attention to the Covenant than ever before. The Transformers: Exodus novel reintroduced the Covenant of Primus as a chronicle of all Cybertronian history, from the dawn of the universe to the very end of time itself. A new version of Alpha Trion was established as both a member of the Thirteen and as the Covenant's author, having written its contents with a reality-bending artifact known as the Quill. With this new role and backstory, the Covenant would continue to feature alongside Alpha Trion in both sequel novels Exiles and Retribution, while one of its prophecies would be the subject of the first season finale of the Transformers: Prime cartoon. In 2013, Transformers: The Covenant of Primus was released as a real-world version of the fictional book (albeit containing none of the specific quotes ever given in any of its fictional appearances), written from Alpha Trion's perspective, and chronicling the fictional events of most (but not all) of the Aligned media released up to that point.
Outside of the Aligned media, the Covenant had notable appearances in such series as The Transformers: Regeneration One by IDW Publishing and Beast Wars: Uprising by Fun Publications. In Regeneration One (written yet again by Simon Furman), the Covenant made its first visual appearance since Beast Wars, where it was redesigned from being a book containing datatrax to being a golden disk containing knowledge, hidden within a secret chamber with the Sword of Primus. In Beast Wars: Uprising, the Covenant was expounded upon with the "Book of Logos", a full-text version of a part of the Covenant written by Logos Prime that foretold many events of the Grand Uprising. And all the while, IDW's main Transformers comics from 2005–2018 abstained from using the traditional version of the Primus lore, and so opted to invent a stand-in holy book named the "Covenant of Primes", in reverence to the Thirteen Primes instead of to Primus himself.
