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| Non-secular Covenant | |
| Posted By: scarab | Date: 3/7/10 3:29 p.m. |
In Response To: Re: Is that your best response? (Harmanimus) : There is a lot more to Covenant Culture than the human Covenant war. : Something I find a lot of people seem to gloss over. I wonder if the Covenant society is anything like Europe's Christendom? Many of society's infrastructural tasks were performed by religious rather than secular bodies. Sometimes they would be founded by a rich or influential personage or a single, charismatic, figure. Maybe 343 could do Covenant based stories where interspecies or intraspecies conflicts could be mediated or exacerbated by Prophet intervention. Show the Covenant society working. Show its everyday aspects, what it does when its not at war. Show the tensions between secular and religious factions, personal and theocratic interests. But also show the strength of the idea of Covenant brotherhood and how it helps different species to work in 'harmony'. Even the Brutes and Elites got along, after a fashion. But even the Covenant war machine... its not likely to be run along secular, professional lines like our armies would be. Are officers paid? Do they have to have their own income? Is the military a meritocracy? Or is success based on who you know or who you associate with? Does military success translate into political power for figures who retire with a high rank? Could the Arbiter have looked forward to a career on the council after a successful termination to his campaign against the humans? or is military service merely a service, given without thought for reward? Is the reward given in the afterlife? Or do ambitious Covenant expect rewards in both realms? There was a 343 story where assassinating a Prophet was expected to have a major, detrimental, effect on Covenant supply lines. That's not normal for someone who just holds a nominal position or who is just doing a job (because they are easily replaced). It may make more sense if he is the head of a religious order, especially a new one. A new order may depend much more on a charismatic founder than an established secular institution would on its titular head. Maybe we shouldn't be thinking of the Covenant in secular, modern, terms. ONI strategists may recruit from unlikely places: historians, and scholars interested in the older Catholic church and older European, Christian, politics.
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