Covenant

Covenant is a location and possible settlement in the Commonwealth in 2287.

Background
A small village boasting pre-War architecture founded by a group of settlers who've made the site their home. The friendly inhabitants of the settlement are responsible for the overall pristine condition of the town's infrastructure. They attempt to attract traders to the settlement to keep it running and allow it to grow.

Sometime following the Broken Mask incident, Doctor Roslyn Chambers and her scientific team arrived at Covenant with the intention to turn the settlement into a refuge for people who have suffered at the hands of the Institute's synths. She convinced the residents of the town to help with her work and subsequently set up a lab with her personnel inside a utility area in the nearby sewers, locally known as the Compound. From there, Chambers and her scientists attempt to discover and flush out the secret Institute agents widely feared and despised by the inhabitants of the Commonwealth.

Following the doctor's arrival, the town of Covenant's reputation and splendor were tainted by the development of a strong anti-synth sentiment within the community, and it became a trap for outsiders unlucky enough to become part of Chambers' experiments.

The settlers support the Compound's mission of validating a psychological assessment that is meant to identify synths. This assessment is called the SAFE test and is the focus of a continuous experiment whereby visitors to Covenant are screened using the SAFE test and are possibly later kidnapped, interrogated, and killed in order to discover how effective the SAFE test is at identifying synths. Those who the SAFE test designates "probable synths" are also subject to interrogation and torture in an attempt to further refine their assessment.

Any belongings, goods, or junk left behind by kidnapped travelers are looted by Dr. Chambers' men and turned over to Penny for sale. Although the hefty price of these ill-gotten gains means her shop is unable to make a profit from them. As a result, the town has a deficit of 250 caps.

Layout
Covenant is a small settlement along the eastern shore of Mystic Lake, inhabited by ten people, a Mister Handy named Deezer and a house cat named Dora. There is a large wall surrounding the whole settlement with nine heavy machine gun turrets on small wooden platforms. Inside the wall are four houses and a small garden. The houses look mostly intact as if they had barely been touched by the Great War at all. The Sole Survivor may comment on this by saying that all the buildings look almost pre-War.

There is a workbench in a shack near the garden. Many of the buildings may be locked at first, but the inhabitants will occasionally go in and out the doors of every building and they can then be followed without needing to resort to lockpicking. They don't leave the room while the Sole Survivor is inside, but they may still close the door behind them and lock the Sole Survivor in.

The guesthouse (last house on the left when entering from the main gate) contains a bed that can be freely used by the player (in Survival mode). The containers in this house can be used for storage without the items becoming owned by the settlement, and the items in this house can be freely taken even if the player is not allied to the Settlement. There are a few other freely takeable junk items around the settlement, mostly around the backs and sides of the houses, some near the workshop. The cabinet under the toolbox in the workshop shack can also be freely used as a container.

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Notable loot

 * Justice - A unique combat shotgun can be bought from Penny Fitzgerald.
 * Destroyer's helmet - Also sold by Penny.
 * Penny's ledger - A note on the safe on Penny's shop.
 * Covenant shop key - Carried by Penny and Patricia Montgomery, and inside Penny's cash register.
 * The SAFE report - Found on the desk inside the office building.
 * Covenant office key - Carried by Jacob Orden and Brian Fitzgerald, and in a desk inside the office.
 * Raider report and another copy of the SAFE report in a wall/floor safe hidden behind a crate in the office building along with ten fusion cores.
 * Two Covenant reminder notes, in the first house on left, will prompt the Sole Survivor to make a comment. The other lies in a bin at Penny Fitzgerald's place.
 * Covenant house key - Carried by most inhabitants and on Jacob's nightstand next to his bed.
 * Jacob's password - A note in his house, on the nightstand next to his bed. Gives access to his office terminal.
 * Map to Compound is carried by Ted Huntley.
 * A Join the Railroad holotape can be found in the trash can next to the door, in the house with the three beds and radio.
 * Caravan details - Given to the player character by Honest Dan during Human Error.
 * An overdue book is located in a toilet behind the shop.
 * A leveled suit of power armor can be found northwest of Covenant in the lake near the tail of the crashed vertibird.

Appearances
Covenant appears only in Fallout 4.

Bugs

 * If your game is not completely loaded when you approach Covenant and you walk into the doors before they load in, the town will be hostile.
 * After completing the quest by killing Dr. Roslyn Chambers while Honest Dan is with you, you can repeatedly receive your reward of 300 caps by walking away and restarting the dialogue with him.
 * If you first discover Covenant after completing Nuclear Family or any variant of The Nuclear Option, the settlement will act as if you have already completed the "SAFE" test and welcome you with open arms. Any quests that are associated with Covenant are not able to be completed.
 * When approaching Covenant for the first time, if the Sole Survivor speaks with Swanson and agrees to take the test they will be asked to take a seat. If the player does not sit down straight away, once they return to the seat, it is possible Swanson will not be present in his normal position seated at the desk. If the player then sits down the SAFE Test will begin but because Swanson is not present the player will hear him ask the first question but will not be able to answer, leaving the player stuck in the chair.
 * Having Tesla coils installed in a suit of power armor will randomly zap NPCs in the town, causing them to turn aggressive. It can happen during conversations.
 * The reason for this is that resident NPCs are frequently (but randomly) flagged as hostile. This can be seen in VATS. Despite being flagged as hostile they are not aggressive to the player character unless attacked.
 * If the original inhabitants of Covenant have been killed, any remaining turrets in Covenant will be hostile towards new turrets, the player character and hostiles, and will not add to the settlement's defense rating. The turrets can not be scrapped and will not despawn after destroying them, making it difficult to replace them with new turrets.
 * With care a new turret can be placed next to the smoking ruins of the old one.
 * The turrets can be removed in the same manner as the default beds in various settlements: 1. Place one or two wooden floors on the ground somewhere. 2. Point at a turret, then press and hold the use button ('e' on the PC) until it stops animating. 3. Set the turret down on the wooden floor. Do not set it down anywhere else, because you will never be able to pick it up again. 4. Either once per turret, or after you've filled the floor with turrets, point to the wooden floor and press the button to store it in your workshop ('tab' on the PC). All the turrets will disappear forever, nicely and cleanly. It's recommended to save first in case a turret gets misplaced by accident.
 * The turrets can be removed permanently by selecting them with the console opened, using and then . The latter command permanently removes the selected object from the game for this savegame, so care should be taken that the turret was in fact selected.
 * The smoking ruins can also be removed in console by selecting them and then using and then . Therefore it might not be necessary to remove the original turrets until they are actually destroyed. The platform remains to place a newly constructed turret.
 * After completing the Human Error quest and acquiring Covenant as a settlement, all of the items and beds inside will still be marked as owned, making all settlers immediately hostile if anything is taken. This happens regardless of which path is taken in the quest and regardless of whether the item or lock is displayed as green. The same effect may happen to a 'wild mutfruit' plant in the corner of the garden. If the settlers become hostile, the town happiness rating will quickly erode to zero, and even new settlers summoned by a recruitment beacon after killing all the old settlers will arrive already hostile.
 * These items may be picked up by entering workshop mode and then selected the "Store" option. Items will be transferred to the workbench and will not be marked as stolen. This also works for containers, both locked and unlocked.
 * The beds may be removed by placing a floor, moving the bed onto the floor and then scrapping the floor.
 * On PC, ownership of these items can manually be transferred by selecting each item individually and then using command . This does not work for beds, but does.
 * The corpses of Covenant residents never disappear and periodically respawn their inventory.
 * Covenant may un-ally itself, meaning the workshop and its contents become inaccessible, supply lines are voided and settlers can no longer be interacted with. Companions sent to Covenant may disappear.
 * If you search Stockton's Caravan before you get the lemonade from Deezer, you won't be able to progress the story through Honest Dan.
 * The root cause of some of the turret problems is that the Covenant turrets are incorrectly assigned to the Compound faction, CovenantHQSecurityFaction, not to the Covenant settlement faction, CovenantFaction. This means when the player and companions (including Honest Dan) return to Covenant from fighting in the Compound, the turrets will be hostile to the player's party even if the player sided with Chambers in the end, or didn't release Amelia. If the turrets sight or fire on the player's party, Covenant residents who have the "helps allies" trait will also attack the player's party, and if the player's party fight back that will trigger hostility of all Covenant residents (except Deezer the robot and Dora the cat).
 * Due to this bug, if the player makes no decision in the dialog with Dr Chambers (avoiding or escaping the dialog), Honest Dan will join the player's party next time they go to Covenant and will immediately attack the turrets, usually triggering an all out battle. In this battle, Dan is marked Essential and cannot be permanently killed, and so will repeatedly re-animate until all the turrets are destroyed, battling the residents each time. Swanson is also Essential in this battle (can only be killed by the player action).