Covenant (group)
| This article is about the twelve pre-Cybertronic Transformers that guarded time and space. For the scriptural Covenant of Primus, see Covenant of Primus. |
- The Covenant is a group from the Beast Era Continuity family.
The Covenant is a group of ancient robots created by Primus to guard against the Omega Point. Before he became Cybertron, Primus had already conceived his grand plan of trapping Unicron and creating new life to carry on his fight, but he needed to make sure it would work. So, on a small moon called Protos, Primus tested his ability to create robotic life. These life forms were the Covenant, charged by their creator to watch over their younger cousins, the Transformers, and to stand ready to join the fight against Unicron at a foretold time known as the Omega Point.
Fiction
3H Tales from the Beast Wars comics
The Covenant were created towards the dawn of the current universe by the Light God, Primus. As the proemial force of good in the universe, Primus was constantly at war with his brother Unicron, Chaos-Bringer and Devourer of Worlds, who was responsible for the destruction of the previous universes. During their conflicts, however, Primus came to realize that opposing Unicron was causing just as much damage to the fledgling universe as letting him roam free. A new strategy was required...one involving sacrifice.
On Protos, shadowy moon of Methuselah, Primus infused his life energy below the satellite's surface. For 300,000 years he cultivated a cavernous architecture beneath the moon, filled with ancient technology more advanced than that of the farthest future. When this framework was complete, Primus breathed life into Protos, birthing twelve mechanical lifeforms from the inert metal of the moon's surface, lit from within by tiny sparks from his own living essence. These were the Covenant, the original Transformers, the Twelve who arose before the Thirteen.
In the Covenant, Primus had successfully tested his final strategy against Unicron. Primus soon led Unicron into the astral plane, then lured him to chase Primus heedlessly back into the material plane, where they solidifed inside lifeless metal asteroids. Armed with his knowledge from Protos, Primuswas able to reshape his metal prison into Cybertron, and birth the Transformers from his new form. Meanwhile, he assigned the Covenant a sacred mission to occupy their existence. Shokaract, the Omega Point, was a prophecized doomsday foreseen by Primus and his contemporary, the Chronarchitect. The Covenant were charged with monitoring Cybertron and known space, keeping watch for the coming of Shokaract.
This duty, while divine, was ultimately rather monotonous. The Covenant did little but sit and wait for millions of years, hidden away on Protos with only themselves for company. Libras and Scorpius would debate each other constantly over the nature of evil, while Capricun endured 6,000 years under a self-imposed vow of silence. Still, Shokaract did not even threaten to emerge until 2005, when the Chronarchitect made his first materialization before the Covenant. With the death of Optimus Prime and the rising of Unicron, the Matrix of Leadership threatened not to pass to its new guardian before the Planet-Eater emerged victorious. Battle-ready and armed for the final conflict, the Covenant were somewhat crestfallen when Rodimus Prime indeed claimed the Matrix, and the Darkest Hour was averted.
The Chronarchitect manifested again several centuries later, during the years of the Pax Cybertronia. He spoke of damage to the timestream and the coming of the Long Night before vanishing back into the aether. Leonicus, unofficial leader of the Covenant, called for a war council in the Stentorium immediately afterwards. Assignments were made to prepare for the coming of the Omega Point. Libras was assigned the task of reviewing the Observatory's logs to determine what key temporal event led the Chronarchitect to manifest at this temporal juncture. Scorpius prepared an analysis of the modern state of affairs on Cybertron, while Piscor began to assemble the "usual suspects" who might be responsible for setting off Shokaract. The rest were given the simple task of reviewing all of history. The Covenant's personal memory cores were insulated against temporal incursion, but their computer records were not — a thorough review of all their accumulated data might uncover anamolies key to the upcoming threat.
As the Covenant went about their tasks, Leonicus was left to ponder the meaning of the Chronarchitect's final words: ...RETURN TO THE BEGINNING. PREPARE. PREPARE." Covenant
For 200 years, the Covenant searched for the cause of Omega Point. Cybertron had taken a turn for the worse in the meantime, as a new tyrant suspiciously known as Shokaract had risen, conquering both Maximal and Predacon alike. Despite his name, however, the Covenant had little to connect him to the fabled Omega Point. To survey what possible temporal manipulations Shokaract used to secure his rule, Leonicus dispatched four of the Covenant throughout space-time junctions. Three had returned. Scorpius, however, remained ominously absent.
In fact, Scorpius had infiltrated the Predacon hierarchy at some point prior to Shokaract's height of power, under the adoptive name of Sandstorm. Maximal and Predacon fought side-by-side against the forces of Shokaract in this era, and Sandstorm was teamed with the Veteran, an old Autobot turned Maximal. Working with his unwitting allies, Sandstorm concocted a plan for binary spark fusion, uniting the Veteran with one of Shokaract's potential Heralds, the Cub, in order to learn the tyrant's secrets. The composite being who emerged was named Windrazor, and vanished into a transwarp portal while fighting his half-brother Cataclysm, full herald of Shokaract. In their absence, Sandstorm searched for further aid, gathering a force to journey to J'nwan. Schism
As Ariex reviewed from the Protos Observatory the reasons for Cataclysm's use of transwarp technology, he uncovered what the Covenant believed to be The Moment: Cataclysm was to journey into the past, to protect something called the Dark Essence, which possessed priceless but unspoken value to Shokaract. Leonicus and the others agreed — this was the unforeseen temporal event the Chronarchitect first appeared to warn them of. To make matters worse, Cataclysm's destination was the infamous Beast Wars on ancient Earth, one temporal anamoly folding onto another.
Meanwhile, Sandstorm continued on his epic quest towards J'nwan, a region of quantum flux where subspace from beyond natural reality bled over into our own. The insane unreality of the region brought madness and death to all of Sandstorm's party, leaving him the last to reach the forboding plateau where J'nwan rested. Despite his entreaties, however, the Authority who spoke for the legends of J'nwan denied Sandstorm's plea to intervene at Point Omega.Paradox
On Protos, the Covenant could wait on the sidelines no more. Using their own transwarp technology, Leonicus and his brothers traveled back to the time of the Beast Wars, the time of Point Omega, to join Optimus Primal and his warriors against Shokaract. The great evil was momentarily stunned by their arrival, if only because both he and the Dark Essence of Unicron which he channeled were unawares of Primus's old gambit. The initial surprise gave way, however, and Shokaract began to kill. Taurotron, Virgol and others fell before his might. Matters only became more dire when Shokaract resurrected his Heralds, Antagony and Cataclysm, to occupy his foes, and Sandstorm arrived after his failure to recruit in J'nwan.
The fight continued as Beast Warriors from across the timestream were summoned to confront Shokaract, only to fall before his Matrix of Conquest. Unbelievably, Sandstorm also revealed himself as a sleeper agent, a long-unrecognized Herald of Shokaract himself. But Sandstorm, born Scorpius of the Covenant, was true to his origins. He only got close enough to Shokaract to penetrate his invincible dark cloak, injuring the tyrant directly before being slain in turn.
Scorpius's sacrifice shone the way for Leonicus. He assembled the remaining members of the Covenant to convert themselves into pure energy, the essence of Primus from which they were all forged. As the Chronarchitect said, they RETURNED TO THE BEGINNING and, with the dark cloak gone, penetrated Shokaract to his core, battling the personification of the Dark Essence itself while shaped as the essence of pure light in Primus's form. When the legends of J'nwan finally arrived to battle Shokaract from without, the Covenant succeeded in severing the Dark Essence from within.
Point Omega was reached, and the Covenant had fulfilled the destiny written for them before they were even created, before Cybertron itself was born. Terminus
Timelines: Wings of Honor
Dion recalled stories of the Covenant from his youth as a protoform while gazing at the constellations over Cybertron. In one story, Leonicus battled the fiendish ice-demon. The pneuma-lion's claws were useless against the creature, as each ice shard he cleaved free just formed into another ice-demon. Only Scorpius and his flame-breath were able to end the threat of the ice-demon. Flames of Yesterday
Covenant Members
Many members of the Covenant were not named in the original "Reaching the Omega Point" story, though a list of all their members was included with the follow-up comic.
As a result, though all of the Covenant members appear in the BotCon 2000 comic, it's not always clear who is who. There are some members whose identification is blindingly obvious, others who are less certain but still generally agreed upon, and finally, four Covenant members for whom matching a name with a form would essentially be a guess.
![Leonicus[1]](/index.php/File:Leonicus_covenant.jpg)
![Libras[2]](/index.php/File:Libras_covenant.jpg)
Notes
Footnotes
- ↑ Leonicus was the first member of the Covenant created by Primus. Though they recognize no rank among themselves, the other Covenant members often look to Leonicus as leader.
- ↑ Libras, a female Transformer, takes her name from the zodiac sign of Libra, the scales. The most agreed-upon Covenant member outside of the main bunch.
- ↑ The uncertain members are Cancix, Piscor, Sagittarii and Aquator.
