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Mycroft Holmes posted:Hey guys, going to be running a trpg game set after a collapse of civilization due to WWI lasting until 1919 and a more virulent Spanish Flu. What we're both sides plans for 1919 if the Germans hadn't collapsed and what sort of weapon systems would have seen service had the war continued? The Germans establish a new, deep defensive line somewhere in the rear during the winter, somewhere near the Rhine and the Belgian-German border is as good as anywhere, and cling to it for literal grim death while trying not to starve; their civilians are too ill to have a revolution; the Entente loads the American army into a million Renault FTs and points them in the vague direction of Berlin. What exactly would have happened and where is literally impossible to predict (and highly useful for a GM) because Foch's entire philosophy as Supreme Allied Commander was one of opportunism; he didn't much give a poo poo about advancing in any one particular place so long as they were hitting the enemy where they were weakest and continuing to force everyone to retreat to avoid being cut off from their mates who were actually under attack, and so not allowing the Germans to ever dig another really good trench line to bog the war down again. You could literally set heavy fighting anywhere between and to the west of, say, Stuttgart and Bielefeld, and be able to justify it. For your purposes there aren't going to be too many new weapons lying around that weren't in wide use by 1918; the good guys have now, finally, worked out what to do and what to use, and just need to keep doing it. You could probably get away with saying the Germans managed to mass-produce the LKII tank and the MP18, and the Americans the Ford 3-tonner, the Browning Automatic Rifle and the Tommy gun. edit: oh yeah, and Lewisite, lots and lots of loving Lewisite everywhere Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Dec 31, 2016 |
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Dec 31, 2016 17:43
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SeanBeansShako posted:The Polish forces fighting under Napoleon were bad rear end, loyal and looked incredibly nice especially their elites. I like Napoleon's 1813 and 1814 campaigns because he was working with very little cavalry and mostly conscript infantry.
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Dec 31, 2016 17:43
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Maybe a dumb question, but how come so many Soviet guns are a bit bigger than their western "peer"? It doesn't seem to just be a one off thing; the 3.7cm Pak36 got up-graded to 45mm for the M1932 and above, the minor example of the 76mm ZIS-3 vs 75mm short guns, the 85mm ZIS-S-53 vs the 76mm M1, the 100mm D-10 vs 90mm M3, the 115mm 2A20 vs the 105mm L7, and the 2A46M vs the 120mm M256A1. Is there a reason for that, or am I jumping to conclusions?
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Dec 31, 2016 17:47
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Panzeh posted:I like Napoleon's 1813 and 1814 campaigns because he was working with very little cavalry and mostly conscript infantry. Yeah he really was great at commanding raw materiel in the most desperate situations, if he had a few hundred thousand more of those guys he may have just delayed the the invasion of Paris.
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Dec 31, 2016 17:54
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HEY GAL posted:All Pikes Are Beautiful 
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Dec 31, 2016 18:13
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spectralent posted:Maybe a dumb question, but how come so many Soviet guns are a bit bigger than their western "peer"? It doesn't seem to just be a one off thing; the 3.7cm Pak36 got up-graded to 45mm for the M1932 and above, the minor example of the 76mm ZIS-3 vs 75mm short guns, the 85mm ZIS-S-53 vs the 76mm M1, the 100mm D-10 vs 90mm M3, the 115mm 2A20 vs the 105mm L7, and the 2A46M vs the 120mm M256A1. Is there a reason for that, or am I jumping to conclusions? This doesn't really work because armies had guns of all sorts of calibers. The 75mm vs 76mm ZIS-3 doesn't work when you take into account the US or British 76mm guns and so on. All of these guns come under a set of guidelines/requirements that lead up to their development. The gun needs to be X tonnes heavy, be able to be moved by X crew, and capable of penetrating X mm of armor*. Designers go to the drawing board and come up with designs, sometimes based off of older guns to make new guns entirely, or upgrade old guns to improve them (Flak 18 -> Flak 36). You also have to factor how it'll affect supply/manufacturing of new stocks of ammo. To go back to one of your examples, the ZiS-3 actually derives from the F-22USV, which itself is a variant of the F-22, which had a chamber/caliber that could fire 76.2mm rounds from older division guns 76mm M1900 and 76mm M1902.
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Dec 31, 2016 18:14
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Fo3 posted:You know who's not? SE Asia was being islamized since the 1300s dude
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Dec 31, 2016 18:17
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Trin Tragula posted:The Germans establish a new, deep defensive line somewhere in the rear during the winter, somewhere near the Rhine and the Belgian-German border is as good as anywhere, and cling to it for literal grim death while trying not to starve; their civilians are too ill to have a revolution; the Entente loads the American army into a million Renault FTs and points them in the vague direction of Berlin. I could also see both sides using similar tanks through battlefield captures; most of the tanks the Germans fielded were captured British and French vehicles, so I think if both sides started mass producing tanks they would also start capturing each other's stuff more often. Would there be any greater use of semi-automatic rifles? I know the French had some Winchesters contracted and shipped to them.
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Dec 31, 2016 18:33
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spectralent posted:Maybe a dumb question, but how come so many Soviet guns are a bit bigger than their western "peer"? It doesn't seem to just be a one off thing; the 3.7cm Pak36 got up-graded to 45mm for the M1932 and above, the minor example of the 76mm ZIS-3 vs 75mm short guns, the 85mm ZIS-S-53 vs the 76mm M1, the 100mm D-10 vs 90mm M3, the 115mm 2A20 vs the 105mm L7, and the 2A46M vs the 120mm M256A1. Is there a reason for that, or am I jumping to conclusions? Soviets (and Germans) were far beyond everyone else in the heavy gun race during WW2 but I'd say there's no single reason, nor is it always obvious what guns constitute "peers". For example the Soviet 45mm gun was based on the Rheinmetall 37mm gun but the bore was enlarged to improve HE capability. Brits on the other hand went with 2-pounder guns but remarkably didn't procure a HE shell at all, deeming such small shells ineffective. On the other hand Soviets retained Imperial measurements for calibers because they inherited a ton of weapons made to those measures, thus T-34 got equipped with a 3 inch gun (76.2mm). The Sherman on the other hand was armed with a 75mm gun despite United States mostly sticking to Imperial measurements because the gun was based on the French '75', and the French of course used the metric system. When Soviets adopted the Stokes-Brandt mortar they increased the caliber from 3.2 inches to 82mm probably just because it was a nicer number than 81.28mm (incidentally Brits called it the 3-inch mortar which it very clearly wasn't). And what should we consider as peers? The US had 3-inch and 90mm AA guns, Soviets had 3-inch and 85mm AA guns while Germans had 88mm and 128mm heavy FlaKs. Is the 85mm gun used on T-34/85 the peer of the 76mm gun used on Shermans, or is it the equivalent of the 90mm gun used on M26 and M36? And should we compare the 105mm Royal Ordnance L7 to the uncommon T-62 armament or the much more mundane 100mm gun on T-55?
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Dec 31, 2016 18:33
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I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Soviets went with bigger guns in general because they were wary about their metallurgy being able to consistently produce smaller calibre guns that can handle higher pressures.
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Dec 31, 2016 18:38
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Well, the main reason I was thinking of all those was they were tank-armament calibers. Though on reflection, I guess a big part of it probably boils down to "They added 10mm to their gun! Let's add 10mm to ours!".
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Dec 31, 2016 18:39
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Libluini posted:That said, New Zealand probably needs to borrow a lot of money for the necessary investments first. Don't know if that tiny country could do this on their own, maybe the rest of the Commonwealth could help out? The Commonwealth isn't even the EU let alone like the US; it doesnt actually do things. Something like that would last have been a possibility in like the 30s. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Dec 31, 2016 |
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Dec 31, 2016 19:08
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spectralent posted:Well, the main reason I was thinking of all those was they were tank-armament calibers. Though on reflection, I guess a big part of it probably boils down to "They added 10mm to their gun! Let's add 10mm to ours!". Not really. Most gun calibers have a history based on much older designs and the existence of tooling for a specific size bore. The 88 has its roots in a late 19th century naval gun, for example. The decisions that dictate exactly how wide a gun is have more to do with the measurement system used by the engineers, the tooling used to build the weapons, the tooling used to build new tooling, and a whole host of other engineering/production considerations. Things also get more complicated because of differences in how you measure a gun's bore. Is the bore land to land or groove to groove? Small arms ammo in particular is just awful for this.
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Dec 31, 2016 19:11
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spectralent posted:Well, the main reason I was thinking of all those was they were tank-armament calibers. Though on reflection, I guess a big part of it probably boils down to "They added 10mm to their gun! Let's add 10mm to ours!". Well, I'd guess it has more to do with defeating better armor defenses. To make a tank gun that hits harder or penetrates more armor, upping the gun size is one obvious way to try going about it - the others tend to be more focused on improving the gun's penetrating power or improving the rounds the gun fires.
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Dec 31, 2016 19:12
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spectralent posted:Well, the main reason I was thinking of all those was they were tank-armament calibers. Though on reflection, I guess a big part of it probably boils down to "They added 10mm to their gun! Let's add 10mm to ours!". This was actually the case with the 2A20 vs the L7!  Marshal Chuikov of Stalingrad fame was not an intellectual director of the Red Army under Krushchev. So when he heard about the L7 being bigger than the D-10T he demanded that the next Soviet cannon be larger.When told it wasn't ready due to issues with the stabilization: "Why are you jerking me around about how the gun is mounted!? I don't care if it's on a pig, I want that gun!"
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Dec 31, 2016 19:12
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spectralent posted:Well, the main reason I was thinking of all those was they were tank-armament calibers. Though on reflection, I guess a big part of it probably boils down to "They added 10mm to their gun! Let's add 10mm to ours!". Even then, not quite. You upgrade your guns based on what the other guy has... in terms of armor, not because their guns are bigger. Tanks would get bigger guns or longer guns because their current armament was insufficient at penetrating enemy tanks, or because their HE shells were ineffective. That's why the T-34 went from the 76mm to 85mm, why the Panzer IV went from short 75mm to long 75mm. The Panther tank had a long 75mm gun, and the Panther II, apparently, was going to be produced with a 75mm gun as well. It also has to do with limitations of the tank design as well, such as why the M4 Shermans started out with a short 75mm gun and required a new turret to be able to fit the long 76mm gun. Or why the Panzer IV never had a long 88m, and so on.
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Dec 31, 2016 19:13
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feedmegin posted:The Commonwealth isn't even the EU let alone like the US; it doesnt actually do things. Something like that would last have been a possibility in like the 30s. That's kind of sad. So do the other Commonwealth nations do nothing, not even giving preferential treatment in economic negotiations or other mild things? (Like working together militarily, to keep on topic) What if a Tsunami hits New Zealand, will the other nations of the Commonwealth just go "Good luck jerks, hope you can breath underwater?"?  Edit: I don't know anything about how the Commonwealth actually works, but I always assumed it would work like some kind of informal EU, with nations helping each other out if in trouble. I guess I was very wrong here.
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Dec 31, 2016 19:15
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spectralent posted:Maybe a dumb question, but how come so many Soviet guns are a bit bigger than their western "peer"? It doesn't seem to just be a one off thing; the 3.7cm Pak36 got up-graded to 45mm for the M1932 and above, the minor example of the 76mm ZIS-3 vs 75mm short guns, the 85mm ZIS-S-53 vs the 76mm M1, the 100mm D-10 vs 90mm M3, the 115mm 2A20 vs the 105mm L7, and the 2A46M vs the 120mm M256A1. Is there a reason for that, or am I jumping to conclusions? The Soviets had 37 mm guns too, but they were replaced with 45 mm guns, which could deliver a bigger HE load. This was important, since infantry support tanks were armed with 45 mm guns. During WWII, the upgraded high velocity 45 mm M-42 could be compared to the 50 mm Pak 38 rather than the 37 mm Pak. 75 vs 76 mm is a tiny difference, plus the British and Americans both used 75 and 76 mm guns. The reason the USSR used 76 (rather, 76.2) mm guns was inheritance from the Tsarist times, when 76.2 (exactly 3 inches) was settled on as a caliber for field artillery. The S-53 used the ballistics of the 85 mm AA gun. If you want to compare that to an American equivalent, compare it to the 90 mm AA gun. The Soviets also had a 76 mm AA gun, which was used to design the ZIS-3 (not the one you're thinking of) and the 76 mm S-54 tank guns. The 100 mm D-10 can be compared to the 10.5 cm Flak 38 in terms of muzzle velocity. Like I said before, if you want to look at the medium AA gun class, the 85 mm 52-K is the gun you should be looking at. spectralent posted:Well, the main reason I was thinking of all those was they were tank-armament calibers. Though on reflection, I guess a big part of it probably boils down to "They added 10mm to their gun! Let's add 10mm to ours!". You can't really do that. This came up a lot during WWII. Want to plug a 107 mm gun into the IS? Splendid, except all the 107 mm ammunition we have is Tsarist era HE grenades. Want a 130 mm bunker buster? Neato, where are you going to get ammo for it? That's a Navy caliber, stick with a 122 mm gun like we already have. When you need a new gun during wartime, you take an existing gun that's bigger and shove it into your tank. Usually your bet was an AA gun (ZIS-3, S-53, S-54) or a corps gun (D-25, ML-20). In peacetime, you have the luxury of developing something new (F-34) or playing with the barrel length on an existing gun (L-10 -> L-11). Jobbo_Fett posted:Even then, not quite. You upgrade your guns based on what the other guy has... in terms of armor, not because their guns are bigger. Tanks would get bigger guns or longer guns because their current armament was insufficient at penetrating enemy tanks, or because their HE shells were ineffective. The Sherman didn't require a new turret to use 76 mm guns, the T23 turret was just a lot better so there was no reason not to use it. Similarly, the S-53 worked perfectly fine in the hexagonal T-34 turret, but the bigger T-43 turret was already designed and solved a lot of the problems with the small two man turrets, so there was no reason to not use it. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Dec 31, 2016 |
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Dec 31, 2016 19:17
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Libluini posted:That's kind of sad. So do the other Commonwealth nations do nothing, not even giving preferential treatment in economic negotiations or other mild things? (Like working together militarily, to keep on topic) What if a Tsunami hits New Zealand, will the other nations of the Commonwealth just go "Good luck jerks, hope you can breath underwater?"? I think Australia and New Zealand count more on the American umbrella, to be honest.
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Dec 31, 2016 19:19
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Libluini posted:That's kind of sad. So do the other Commonwealth nations do nothing, not even giving preferential treatment in economic negotiations or other mild things? (Like working together militarily, to keep on topic) What if a Tsunami hits New Zealand, will the other nations of the Commonwealth just go "Good luck jerks, hope you can breath underwater?"? We've got a pound shop Olympics I guess, and the Queen tours occasionally?
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Dec 31, 2016 19:28
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Trin Tragula posted:The Germans establish a new, deep defensive line somewhere in the rear during the winter, somewhere near the Rhine and the Belgian-German border is as good as anywhere, and cling to it for literal grim death while trying not to starve; their civilians are too ill to have a revolution; the Entente loads the American army into a million Renault FTs and points them in the vague direction of Berlin.
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Dec 31, 2016 20:09
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HEY GAL posted:i am interested in the fantasy austro-hungarians Gonna go with "dead as poo poo" in this timeline.
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Dec 31, 2016 20:13
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Corbeau posted:Gonna go with "dead as poo poo" in this timeline.
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Dec 31, 2016 20:14
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HEY GAL posted:that's our timeline too I'm guessing the fantasy Italians are in the same boat. That particular apple fell hard from the Roman tree.
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Dec 31, 2016 20:17
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Cythereal posted:I'm guessing the fantasy Italians are in the same boat.
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Dec 31, 2016 20:24
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HEY GAL posted:do not insult my glacier-dwelling ancestors! hell, they're probably still up there, i remember someone found a grave full of austro-hungarians in that front a while ago when the ice melted Attacking a fortified position in the Alps across a river once and failing is understandable. Attacking said position seven times, less so.
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Dec 31, 2016 20:27
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HEY GAL posted:i am interested in the fantasy austro-hungarians Let me try this. In Fantasy Italy, the New Spanish Flue arrives with the British and French troops send to help Italy against Austria-Hungary. The flue spreads all over Italy and then northwards, roughly following the soldiers. Over several months, the front against Austria-Hungary weakens to the point where German troops with the help of some leftover Austrian units can reverse the war and finally break through. But because of how the military officers involved underestimate the flue pandemic, tons of German and Austrian soldiers get infected. With wounded soldiers and freed POWs the Spanish Flue soon reaches even Vienna. Ravaged from both war and disease, Austria-Hungary collapses even as the combined German-Austrian forces reach Rome. Just hours before reaching Rome, the last officer of note in the invading army, Captain Erwin Rommel, finally and tragically succumbs to the Spanish Flue, too. The remnant of the German-Austrian forces in Itally dissolve in panic, spreading the disease to every last bit of Italy still left unaffected. The death toll in Italy and Austria-Hungary reaches absurd numbers, the government in those regions collapses in just a couple months, making the problem even worse. At the very end, the Spanish Flue rages so fast through broken Austria-Hungary, it even overtakes the infection spreading through Germany, and reaches Russia long before the first cases of the Spanish Flue are reported in Eastern Germany. Now I could write in detail what happens in Russia next when Spanish Flue 2.0 arrives, but I don't want to give you nightmares so close before the end of 2016. Guten Rutsch!
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Dec 31, 2016 20:28
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HEY GAL posted:i am interested in the fantasy austro-hungarians Same as the Germans except with armoured cars instead of tanks; fall back to the Carso and a new line in southern Serbia, try not to die for as long as possible, hope the Italian/Serbian/Venizelist Greek/French/British coalition falls apart before us and Bulgaria do. Cythereal posted:Attacking a fortified position in the Alps across a river once and failing is understandable. Attacking said position seven times, less so. Excuse you, they succeeded at the sixth attempt. The other six battles were fought at least a mile and a half to the east! Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Dec 31, 2016 |
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Dec 31, 2016 20:28
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Cythereal posted:I'm guessing the fantasy Italians are in the same boat. I'd argue that sending wave after wave of armies at the enemy is a very Roman thing to do. The difference is that the Romans would, like, probably sack their commanding officer after he failed.
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Dec 31, 2016 20:41
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Elyv posted:I'd argue that sending wave after wave of armies at the enemy is a very Roman thing to do. To quote Winston Churchill, "Thank God, we had to have the Italians the last time!"
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Dec 31, 2016 20:48
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So, thread, many people are talking about what a bad year 2016 was, and glad they are to be rid of it. Are there other years people have felt like this? 1666? 1939? 1865? 1815, the year without a summer?
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Dec 31, 2016 21:23
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Char B, part 2 Queue: TK-3, Medium Tank Mk.II, Medium Tank Mk.III, KH-50 et al, PzIV, PzIII Ausf. A, PzIII Ausf. B through D, SR tanks Available for request:  T2E1 Light Tank M3A1 Combat Car M1 Howitzer Motor Carriage T-18  A1E1 Independent Infantry Tank Mk.I  LTP T-37 with ShKAS ZIK-20 T-12 and T-24 HTZ-16 Wartime modifications of the T-37 and T-38 SG-122 76 mm gun mod of the Matilda Tank destroyers on the T-30 and T-40 chassis 45 mm M-42 gun Soviet tractor tanks 02SS Aerosan NEW  L-10 and L-30 Strv m/40 Strv m/42 Landsverk prototypes 1943-1951  Trials of the TKS and C2P in the USSR 37 mm anti-tank gun  SR tanks  Renault NC Renault D1 Renault R35 Renault D2 Renault R40 Char B1 bis  PzI Ausf. B PzI Ausf. C PzII Ausf. a though b PzII Ausf. c through C Pak 97/38 Pz.Sfl.IVb  LT vz 35 ČKD TNH and LTP (Tanque 39) NEW
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Dec 31, 2016 21:37
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Cyrano4747 posted:Things also get more complicated because of differences in how you measure a gun's bore. Is the bore land to land or groove to groove? Small arms ammo in particular is just awful for this. Not to mention that bore size alone is a terrible indicator of what kind of external ballistics to expect.  76mm AP is a lot more effective against armor than 75mm AP, but not because it's a millimeter and change larger in diameter, or because it weighs slightly more. It's because it has 33% more case volume and more powder, meaning that for a given barrel length, the projectile is going to be moving quite a bit faster.
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Dec 31, 2016 22:12
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Thanks for the suggestions, guys. If it weren't  , I'd share the Weird War I sourcebooks with you. They're honestly pretty interesting.
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Dec 31, 2016 22:19
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Across the shell-pocked lunar landscape of Flanders, things not of this earth crawl and slither through the corpse-choked mud. Shapes beyond imagining are glimpsed moving in the dirty white chlorine clouds that drift across the Ypres battlefield. In the Pripet Marshes dark waters stir as the long-dead remains of executed criminals claw their way toward a sun they haven’t glimpsed in a thousand years. War comes to a continent still reeking with the stench of the Black Death, peopled by degenerate noble families holding secrets brought back from the Crusades and the far-flung corners of the globe; secrets dredged forth by world-spanning empires whose enlightened explorers pillaged dark corners best left alone. The sheer scale of this war dwarfs previous human endeavors in killing their fellow man, and carefully laid tactics and strategies all come to naught in the face of the massive destruction unleashed. Cinch your gas mask on tight, hunch your shoulders, and wait for the soul-shattering whistle that will send you and your comrades by the thousands into the killing fields of No Man’s Land. Welcome to Weird War One. The New Dawn Millennia ago, an unknown author inscribed the tabula bellum, the “tablets of war.” The tablets described how the energy released at the moment of a person’s death could be captured and harnessed by those with the proper knowledge. Tremendous loss of life, like those associated with war, could result in vast powers and even supernatural abilities for those properly prepared. This “Great Awakening” would usher in a golden age for those ruthless enough to pay such a high and terrible price. Fragments of the tabula bellum were transcribed, gathered, collected, and lost again over the millenia. Many madmen (and women) attempted to use the fragments for their own gain. Most ended in disaster as poorly translated passages caused the caster to go mad or perish in dark flame. Other times the overly ambitious could not cause enough death to fuel their infernal ceremonies. Over time, a globe-spanning cabal of those exposed to the tablets’ dark rituals evolved. Civilizations came and went, as did secret organizations based around those with the forbidden knowledge. These cults have been known by many names throughout the ages—the Sons of Ra, Horns of Ba’al, Gatekeepers, and most recently, the New Dawn. Luckily for humanity, a secretive and select group called the Sons of Solomon rose to stop the supernatural horrors of the world and those who would use it for their own ends—including the disciples of the tabula bellum. The Sons are known by very few, preferring instead to operate beneath another level of secret organization such as the Twilight Legion, the Order of St. George, the Templars (and later the New Templars), and more recently MI-13 in England, the Bureau des Phénomènes Mystérieux Non Expliqués in France, or the Abteilung zur Weiterentwicklung Spezieller Waffen und Truppen (Department of Special Weapons and Troop Development) in Germany. Most members of these groups have no idea they are but extensions of the far older Sons of Solomon. Napoleon In 1798, Napoléon Bonaparte departed for Egypt. To the public, it was yet another campaign of conquest. But the future Emperor had a far greater goal in the sands of North Africa—he had learned of the tabula bellum. amed Library of Alexandria before its destruction two thousand years earlier. Napoléon’s agents didn’t find the tablets, but they did find ancient Egyptian scrolls they believed were translations. Unfortunately for them, ancient Egyptian was an indecipherable and dead language. But dark forces do not remain dormant for long. Within a month of the scrolls’ discovery, one of Napoléon’s own soldiers discovered a curious black slab in the deserts a dozen leagues northwest. The so-called Rosetta Stone contained text in both Greek and ancient Egyptian that allowed translation of the latter. Within the year, Napoléon knew the screts of the tabula bellum. Napoléon was ultimately defeated by the Twilight Legion, a tale that will be told elsewhere. But his scrolls, called the “Alexandria translation,” eventually fell into the hands of a group calling itself the New Dawn. The Awakening In 1870 the New Dawn formulated a plan to bring about a massive war that would grant all its members phenomenal, world-changing power.At the scale they imagined, the Alexandra translation would literally rip a hole in the fabric of reality. They would be masters of a brand new world they could change to their liking. They called this promised event “the Awakening.” To foment a war to end all wars, members of the New Dawn slowly infiltrated key governmental positions throughout the Western World, becoming civil servants, diplomats, generals, and policymakers. Those institutes they couldn’t penetrate had their members subverted by the promise of great wealth or personal power. A key event in the New Dawn’s machinations was the retirement of German Chancellor Otto von Bismark. Though Bismarck was shrewd and hungry for power, he was no enemy of mankind. His agents thwarted operatives of the New Dawn for many years before failing health forced him to retire. In England, Alistair Crowley’s Astrum Argentum lured members of the upper class into its embrace with the promise of forbidden knowledge. France’s Rosicrucians worked to build a mighty war machine emphasizing courage, the spirit of the attack, and mass of forces. Russia’s ruling class had long waged war against the machinations of fell societies in Central Asia and southeast Europe and was more resistant than others to the New Dawn’s seductive call, but the Tsar and his wife quickly fell under the influence of an ancient member of the New Dawn named Rasputin. In Germany the New Dawn gained Kaiser Wilhelm’s ear, feeding upon his feelings of inferiority to the British. Austro-Hungary saw the establishment in Vienna of the List Society, which insinuated itself into the ruling class through a variety of publications feeding the fad of esoteric spiritualism. The Foundation for the Harmonious Advancement of Mankind rose in the US. Founded by an anonymous donor and quickly enlisting a number of wealthy American industrialists including prominent yellow journalists, this organization allowed the New Dawn to infiltrate the highest levels of American society, although the everchanging political landscape of the US made long-term dominance of government difficult for the cabal. A web of entangling alliances, treaties, and military policies descended on Europe like a smothering rain of ash, setting the stage for the massive bloodletting to come. New technologies were encouraged and incorporated into Europe’s arsenals, although doctrine continued to emphasize élan and the spirit of the attack. The scientific and industrial base were rapidly expanded in the name of trade and globalism, but in reality they served to set the stage for the necessary inventions to escalate the bloodletting to required levels. Most countries were subtly encouraged to expand their overseas possessions, ostensibly as a resource base and market for manufactured goods, but in reality to serve as a source of bodies for the coming conflict. Harmonious Fists By the late 1800s China had been carved up into spheres of influence by the various European powers, with many of these foreign delegations infiltrated by members of the New Dawn searching for knowledge believed to be lost in the area. In 1899 one such search party uncovered what they were looking for, but before the forbidden knowledge could be spirited out of the country the Chinese government was alerted. Agents of the Twilight Legion disguised as a local group called the Harmonious Fists moved against the New Dawn the next year before they could leave the country. They blockaded the port of Tietsin and the main concentration of Westerners in Peking, where the Sons believed occultists held the forbidden manuscripts. Events soon spiraled out of their control as a widespread revolt against Westerners spread across China. European newspapers were filled with hyperbolic stories of terrible atrocities perpetuated upon foreigners by the Chinese. Desperate to gain the newly uncovered knowledge, New Dawn agents across Europe and in the United States used public opinion to put together a 19,000-man-strong international military coalition that moved from the port of Tietsin to the foreign legations in Peking. By August the international force had smashed the siege, forced the Dowager Empress of China to the negotiating table, and unbeknownst to all but a select few, spirited the forbidden information out of the country and back to Europe. After several years of painstaking study and cross-correlation with previously uncovered knowledge, this new information sent an electric jolt through the New Dawn’s ranks. The lost scrolls foretold a bloodshedfilled time when the veil of reality would be especially thin, allowing a special ceremony to bring about the much anticipated world-wide changes long sought by the cult. By modern reckoning, it would fall sometime in the middle of 1918. and preparation by the New Dawn culminated in a world ripe for the cataclysmic bloodshed that would unleash the energies necessary for opening the gate. It needed was a single spark to light the fuse to global war. In France, General Joffre was made Commander in Chief of the French Army. Although he had never commanded forces at this level, his indoctrination into the New Dawn following discoveries he made during the French-Sino War made him the perfect man to lead the forces of France into the impending cataclysm. Lord Horatio Kitchener, British Secretary of State for War, was one of the main New Dawn agents in the United Kingdom. Kitchener was actually a heroic soul, but he discovered forbidden knowledge during his service in the Sudan. This exposure and the weirdness generated by the vicious fighting against the Mahdists drove him mad. One day he plotted the destruction of the world, and the next he tried to save it. Like Joffre and Kitchener, British General Haig encountered mind-blasting weirdness on the battlefields of Africa and Asia. Upon his return to England in 1911 he actively sought out people with a knowledge of the occult. By 1914 Haig had been indoctrinated into the New Dawn, where his position as aide-de-camp to King George V gave the shadowy organization unprecedented influence. His time as Consul-General of Egypt allowed Haig to carry out a program of exploration of many forgotten tombs hinted at in tomes and dusty scrolls. He greatly expanded the brotherhood’s knowledge of the requirements for the Great War and added to their sorcerous abilities. The retirement of Bismark and the insinuation of New Dawn agents into the court of Kaiser Wilhelm did much to strengthen their efforts in Germany. Unfortunately for them, however, the appointment of Helmuth von Moltke as the Chief of the German Staff threw a wrench in their plans for the upcoming war. A friend of the Kaiser, Moltke never accepted any of the New Dawn’s overtures, and entered the war as a firm German patriot. Several other highranking officers in the German Staff were not as resistant to the lure of power offered by the cultists, however, and plans were put in place for these pawns to play major roles in the upcoming conflict. In Russia, several high-ranking officers and government officials had been suborned by the New Dawn, despite the best efforts of the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, to ferret them out. General Rennenkampf was one such individual. Commanding a large force during the Boxer Rebellion, he was responsible for the destruction of several major forces of the Harmonious Fists, thereby cementing his position as a highly regarded member of the New Dawn. He was also present in Siberia during the Tunguska Event, the cult’s aborted attempt to enact some of the rituals found in China. Its pawns in place, the New Dawn began the countdown toward the war that would culminate in the much-anticipated event. Everything was in place, from the leaders down to the killing technology. This time, they vowed, the War to End All Wars would occur and usher in a new age. What the New Dawn didn’t count on, however, were the unknowable effects of the Weird War. The Great Plan Following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, the nations of Europe mobilized for war. Hundreds of thousands of men flocked to their countries’ colors, eager to participate in this great adventure. In the shadows, the New Dawn worked to ensure that the onrushing train of war could not be stopped. Jingoism and nationalistic fervor were stoked to levels seldom seen before, fueled by new technologies such as the telegraph and railroad, as well as the all-pervasive newspaper. In the west, Germany attacked through the Low Countries according to the Schleiffen Plan. Originally designed as a great wheeling maneuver through neutral Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg that would turn the flank of the French forces through Flanders, the plan called for a large German force on the right flank while a smaller force fought a delaying, defensive battle on the left wing. Devised in 1905, this plan would have rapidly destroyed the French army and then allowed Germany to turn to the east against Russia. Such a quick victory would have been anathema to the New Dawn’s plans, and over the years the plan was changed, shifting forces away from the offensively oriented right wing and depriving it of the striking power necessary for a decisive, warwinning blow. Instead, as the long gray lines of German troops marched to war in August of 1914, the stage was set for descent into a morass from which millions would not return. Battle of the Frontiers Belgium The first path to total victory for Germany lay in neutral Belgium. A strong fortress system bolstered its tiny army of 100,000 men, while the presence of a series of rivers also added to the small country’s defensibility. In the late 1800s, Liege had been turned into a fortress city with the construction of a series of forts ringing the city. Unbeknownst to the Belgian government, the designer of the fortifications incorporated an eldritch design into their construction. Six pentagonal forts supplemented by six secondary triangular forts were linked by subterranean tunnels that completed a vast arcane design. This design channeled the power of a nearby ley line into the center of the city. The true purpose for this system lay under the metropolis. In 705 AD a pagan cult took hold in the city, supplanting Christianity. Saint Lambert arrived in the city soon after and encountered the followers of Bacchus. St. Lambert finally defeated an avatar of the god, which he imprisoned in the city’s catacombs, despite being mortally wounded in battle with Bacchus. The fortress system’s design shored up the flagging power of the creature’s prison located deep beneath the citadel. In August 1914 the German Army brought up a siege train containing a number of super-heavy artillery pieces and reduced the forts ringing Liege to rubble, the last surrendering on August 16th. While this was a great victory for the Germans, the destruction of the supernatural containment field along with the death and fear of the garrison, released and energized the avatar and freed it to rampage across the countryside. As the German Army moved through Belgium it pushed the Allied forces relentlessly back toward the French frontier. The Belgian people unexpectedly rose up against their invaders, ambushing soldiers, sniping at columns, and destroying rails and bridges. The German Army responded with reprisals, including hostagetaking and executions, in an orgy of violence not seen in Europe since the Thirty Years’ War. Under Bacchus’ malignant influence, each side escalated their attacks and soon vandalism, plunder, arson, and wanton destruction reigned. This not only hindered the Germans’ progress and supply lines through the country, but also provided the Allies with a propaganda coup. Eventually the German General Staff concluded that something was occurring beyond the natural. Under orders from the Kaiser himself, the High Command dispatched special teams of advisors from the Abteilung zur Weiterentwicklung Spezieller Waffen und Truppen (Department of Special Weapons and Troop Development) to discover its source. They eventually tracked down the ancient entity, Bacchus, and with the help of Belgian antiquities experts destroyed the mad god. Unfortunately for the Sons of Solomon, the “Rape of Belgium” became a rallying cry both in Europe and around the world, shoring up public support for the war. Increased enlistments and sympathy for the Allied cause ensured a steady supply of bodies for the meatgrinder…all to the delight of the New Dawn. Ardennes Attacks On August 21st French troops advanced into the tangled woods and ravines of the Ardennes. Despite the warnings of locals, the infantry marched into the area in a thick fog, brushing aside several small formations of Germans. But they were unable to find the main forces they had been told lurked in the woods. As the fog thickened and heavy rain poured down on August 22nd, what appeared to be ancient Germanic warriors leapt from ambush in the thickets, cutting down the surprised French troops and routing them. All across the front, division after division fell back under the assault of half-naked warriors wielding swords and spears. By nightfall thousands of Allied casualties littered the field. Despite the exhortations of General Joffre to attack, by August 23rd the Third and Fourth Armies had been decisively defeated, beaten back to their starting positions. As word of the ghostly ancient foes spread, Joffre ordered drumhead court martial trials for the commanding officers of the routed units for “cowardice in the face of the enemy.” Those who were most outspoken about what they had faced in the dank forests were quickly executed. Mons The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) fought their first major engagement of the war at Mons on August 23rd. Occupying defensive positions along a canal, they held off a German force twice their size. Official after-action reports attributed the heavy German casualties to rapid, well-aimed rifle fire from the small but veteran professional British force. Unofficially, stories soon spread of the presence of ghostly bowmen from Agincourt, who aided the Tommies by scything down the advancing Germans with clouds of longbow arrows. British authorities quickly acted to squash such stories, and although official reports were sanitized, the tale spread in a number of papers back in the UK. British forces unexpectedly pulled back from their prepared positions near the end of the day, with their generals citing a correction of the lines due to pressure on their French allies. In reality, the heaps of German corpses along the canal and its bridges caused by the phantom longbowmen rose with a terrible vengeance as the sun set and pursued the English soldiers throughout the evening and night. A series of desperate rearguard actions ensued as terrified Tommies beat back the hungry dead. Eventually the walking dead were put down, but the shock drove many men mad and caused whole units to disappear in the crucible of battle, where their bodies added to the horde of zombies. Eventually the line stabilized two weeks and 250 miles later on the Marne River Following the Battle of the Frontiers and the subsequent Great Retreat, the German Army found itself almost in the eastern outskirts of Paris. At this point, British Field Marshal French began to draw up plans for a British evacuation but was countermanded by Lord Kitchener, now British Secretary of State for War. Kitchener, driven to serve the New Dawn periodically by his madness, needed the war to continue and expand so the appropriate level of bloodshed could occur and trigger the Awakening. With their backs to Paris, the French invoked a spirit of patriotism and nationalism in a fervor rarely seen. Invoking those who saved the Republic in 1794, hundreds of Parisian taxis were loaded with troops for the 30 mile trip to the front. The exuberance of the population and the boost to the troops’ morale gave the movement an almost religious fervor. On the night of September 8th the French Army, bolstered by these newly arrived soldiers, launched a surprise attack. Their numbers seemingly endless, wave upon wave of French troops crashed against the startled troops of the 1st and 2nd Armies. Stories of mobs of Frenchmen brandishing antique weapons began to spread through the German formations. Moltke himself, at the front to observe the troops, suffered a nervous breakdown when he spotted a shining figure the French described as Joan of Arc striding forward against the Boch lines, sword raised in benediction. On the eastern flank, three German armies attacked three French armies. Fighting was especially intense around the peat bogs and wetlands of the St. Gond Marshes. The furious fighting in an area diligently avoided by the superstitious locals awoke a long-hidden evil in the battlefield. By dusk of the first day the bogs began to give up their dead. Mummified bodies of executed criminals and sacrificial victims crawled from the stinking marshes, freed by the concussion of the artillery barrages and animated by the hatred and fear flowing from the large number of soldiers nearby. These bogmen quickly fell upon any living person they encountered, causing the superstitious French Moroccan troops in particular to fall back. German attacks also began to peter out as this and other weirdness took hold, and by September 10th the Kaiser’s troops began to fall back towards the border. Under pressure from the government and High Command, General Joffre ordered a flanking attack to encircle and destroy the disorganized German armies. True to his New Dawn masters, his orders deliberately slowed the pace of the attack and the Central Powers were able to slip out of the noose and live to fight another day. Indeed, the pursuit by the British and French forces ran into entrenched German troops on the 14th, resulting in bloody frontal attacks and setting the stage for the massive bloodletting desired by the shadowy cabal. A series of flanking attacks toward the north ended on the coast and completed the line of trenches that stretched across the continent. This “Race to the Sea” culminated in the First Battle of Ypres. Ypres From October to November bitter fighting seesawed back and forth across this strategic western Belgian town. The intense fighting here included hand-to-hand combat as well as the deliberate flooding of an area 20 miles wide by two miles deep. So many were killed that the battlefield was overrun by walking dead and entities called hates which preyed not only on the soldiers but any civilians they came in contact with. Other weirdness involved the ancient city itself. The destruction of the ancient Cloth Hall opened a nexus of supernatural forces. One such event was the burning of an ancient tapestry whose woven sigils bound a spirit of pestilence that had ravaged the area in the Middle Ages. The tapestry’s destruction released this malignant entity and for the rest of the war the area was noted by the military’s medical authorities for the high rates of disease among the troops. Of course, modern doctors attributed this to the poorly drained soil that composed the area rather than a supernatural cause. Interestingly, chaplains on both sides were the first to notice the increasing weirdness manifesting on the battlefields around Ypres, leading to the unofficial Christmas Truce in December 1914. During this time secret detachments sponsored by the Twilight Legion on both sides of No Man’s Land set out to hunt down some of the supernatural beings haunting the battlefield. A New Sheriff in Town Moltke, still suffering from his nervous breakdown, ordered German forces to retreat and hinted to Kaiser Wilhelm that the war should be ended. This was enough for agents of the New Dawn in the Kaiser’s court to call for his replacement by General Erich von Falkenhayn as the new Chief of the General Staff. Falkenhayn had played a critical role for the New Dawn during the Boxer Rebellion and was well suited to carry out its wishes in the planned cataclysm. With its agent finally in command of all German forces, all that was required now were millions of men and the means to kill them in vast quantities, along with the political will to continue the slaughter. War in the East The Great War kicked off in the east with a Russian invasion of Galicia in Austria-Hungary and Germany’s East Prussia, designed to draw off Central Power strength from the Balkans. The large, poorly trained and equipped armies of the Tsar initially enjoyed success against the Austro- Hungarians, conquering almost all of Galicia by the end of the year and laying siege to the fortress town of Przemyśl, which would become the longest siege in the war. By the time it ended in March of 1915, over 110,000 Austro-Hungarians died from disease, starvation, and of course the dark things which rise in the violence and horror of war. In East Prussia, however, the Russians faced a different foe. Russian troops smashed into wellequipped and trained forces under Ludendorff and Hindenburg. The Russians were also hampered by how the generals commanding the two armies assigned to the attack refused to cooperate. In fact, General Rennenkampf was a member of the New Dawn, while his colleague General Samsonov was not. Rennenkampf did everything in his power to ensure the Russian troops suffered massive casualties, even delaying the advance of his army to leave Samsonov unsupported. Adding to the Russians’ woes was the weirdness appearing throughout the battlefield. Gremlins in the Tsar’s radio equipment meant Russian orders for the day were often transmitted in the clear rather than being coded, allowing the Germans to prepare for the Russians’ attacks before they occurred. Ancient history also played a major part in the conflict. The Battle of Tannenburg was fought not far from the site of a massive defeat of the Teutonic Knights in 1410. During the battle in 1914 ghostly knights attacked the Russian forces, throwing their ancient foes into disarray. Combined with the slow movement of Rennenkampf’s First Army, only 10,000 out of Samsonov’s force of 230,000 escaped. Driven mad by the sight of the ghostly Teutonic knights who rampaged through his rear areas and rode down his troops, General Samsonov committed suicide. A week later, Rennenkampf’s army was crushed at the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes. The battlespace consisted of a wilderness broken up by 2,000 lakes, which often seemed to swallow up whole companies of troops who were never seen again. Superstitious Prussian peasants warned of water spirits, vengeful witches, and other ghostly beings, and weird happenings seemed to flourish in the wartime conditions. By the end of the year the fighting shifted into Central Poland and the Carpathian Mountains. Unlike the Western Front, the armies in the east did not settle into trench warfare owing to the vast distances involved. 1915-16: A New Era in Bloodshed With the war in the West transitioning from one of movement to one of static positions, Joffre insisted ground must be held at all costs. Any German attacks that pushed back Allied forces would be immediately counterattacked. This strategy, under the guise of protecting sacred French soil, in reality helped push up the body count, although the weirdness spawned by the ensuing terror and death contributed to breakdowns in unit morale. This time period also saw major offensives on a scale previously unimagined. Days-long bombardments followed by mass infantry charges by hundreds of thousands of men resulted in little but the brutal deaths of the attackers, along with the appearance of a variety of weird apparitions that preyed on the survivors. When they weren’t involved in the mass assaults, the troops contended with the horrific conditions of the trenches. Disease and squalor were the watchwords of the day, punctuated by sudden, furious bouts of hand-to-hand combat as each side raided the other’s trenches in small-unit actions. With the pieces set on the chessboard, the technology shepherded along in the 1800s was now turned to military applications to increase the bloodshed. In Germany, Dr. Walter Rathenau was put in charge of the Kaiser’s war effort. He worked tirelessly to mobilize the economy and supply the military’s voracious appetite brought about by war on an industrial scale. The New Dawn worked through its agents in all the belligerents to ensure that newly developed technology in a wide variety of fields—from chemistry to metallurgy to manufacturing—would be turned to the purpose of efficient slaughter. 1915 The Noyon Salient Fearful of a drop off in casualties with the end of the war of maneuvers, the New Dawn prodded General Joffre to plan a campaign against the Noyon salient. Despite an inauspicious start to the battle in Champagne in mid-February, attacks continued there for 45 days, with a final French casualty count of 240,000. A similar attack was launched around St. Mihiel in April, despite tales of disaster there from the previous year. The heavily wooded and broken terrain disrupted the French attacks, and spectral Germanic warriors from Roman times, along with their flesh-and-blood modern cousins, caused heavy French casualties. Under the aegis of the Bureau des Phénomènes Mystérieux Non Expliqués, several specially formed teams attempted to slip across the front lines to deal with this threat. While most teams disappeared into No Man’s Land never to be seen again, some made it deep enough into the tangled fastness of the forests to discover and destroy the burial sites of the ancient Germanic tribes. The heavy losses by their allies in Champagne meant the British attacked alone at Neuve Chapelle. Word of ghostly German barbarians cutting down French poilu (soldiers) in the tangled brambles of the Ardennes made Field Marshal French doubt the steadiness of his allies, and the decision was made to attack with just the available British units. The subsequent assault succeeded, breaking into the German works and capturing the objective within hours. Unfortunately, further British gains were stymied by their own artillery, caused by poor planning, gremlins, and other weirdness that kept the British guns firing at the wrong positions despite calls to lift and shift their fire. The advance was also slowed by the failure of reserve forces to exploit the breakthrough. Although such forces had been positioned, horrors spawned by the concentrated slaughter stymied any response to the breakthrough. This impediment to follow-on forces would be seen again and again throughout this period of the war. Second Try at Ypres The Second Battle of Ypres saw the first use of chlorine gas in April 1915. It also saw the first appearance of battlefield entities composed of the deadly stuff, animated by the agony and suffering of its victims. Those gaseous, malevolent creatures civilians who happened to be downwind—but fortunately chlorine was short-lived once released, despite the evil wills animating these creatures. The development of persistent mustard gas and its release in Ypres in 1917 allowed these entities to wander the blasted fields for weeks at a time, and to lay hidden in depressions, waiting for the unwary to chance upon them. Shortly before the gas attacks, reports came into the British HQ from German prisoners of strange metal canisters deployed on the southern part of the battlefield, away from the launching point of the gas attacks in April. Subsequent intelligence reports described how the Germans moved their original gas weapons to the north due to the prevailing winds. In reality, these canisters contained not gas but horrors found in the deepest jungles of German East Africa. Each canister contained a hive of flying parasites whose method of reproduction in their jungle home consisted of impregnating humans with their eggs. With terrifying speed, these “bloodflies” burrowed into the soft part of their target’s head and lay their eggs. The lucky victims are killed outright, while those who survive usually die when the insect’s offspring burrow to freedom a few days later. Fortunately for the Tommies manning the line at Ypres, a trench raid on April 17th captured some of these canisters, alerting the British to the threat. A secret mission spoiled the German plans by releasing the bioweapon on their own forces. Although all of the raiders were killed, their sacrifice forced the Kaiser’s troops to use the chlorine gas they had stockpiled against the insects to cleanse the battlefield. With no more bloodfly swarms available, the remaining chlorine gas was used against the British trenches. Having lost a large number of troops to their erstwhile insect allies, the Germans were unable to exploit the initial success of the chlorine gas, and the front quickly settled down with little change to the front lines. Escalation The remainder of 1915 saw the war in the West settle into a series of setpiece battles that would become the standard for the duration of the war. New Dawn members secreted amongst Europe’s ruling classes then turned their baleful gaze toward the rest of the world. In May, Italy, swayed by territorial promises of the Allies, entered the war against Austria along a narrow battlefront guaranteed to inflict numerous casualties for a prolonged period. In Africa, a British invasion force marched from South Africa to German Southwest Africa, then turned to German East Africa. The Allies rapidly captured all German ports along the African coastline, but spent the remainder of the war chasing a small German force throughout East Africa at great cost. The Ottoman Empire Egypt Forces of the Ottoman Empire attacked the Suez Canal in Egypt with 20,000 troops in February. A fruitless attack across the canal in the face of machine guns was quickly repulsed, and the Turks retreated back into the desert of southern Palestine. Weirdness arising from the battle kept the British from pursuing, as well as the knowledge of what lurked in the Negev Desert brought back from T.E. Lawrence’s explorations in 1914. The bedraggled Ottoman force suffered greatly during their retreat across the desert. Men were attacked by horrific creatures awoken from their ancient slumbers by special British units dispatched ahead of the retreating foe. Unfortunately—as they found to their chagrin—once unleashed these creatures also preyed on British forces. Gallipoli The Allies attempted an invasion of Turkey at the urging of the Russians. This was envisioned by the strategic planners as a way to relieve pressure on Russia in the Caucasus and open the Dardanelles to Allied warships. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, also had his own reasons for the invasion. Experiencing war in Cuba, India’s frontier, the Sudan, and South Africa, Churchill was no stranger to the weirdness that battle brings. This exposure led him to delve more deeply into esoteric research wherever he was stationed. With German U-boats ravaging Allied shipping, he latched onto an ancient account of how Mithridates VI used a shrine in the area of Gallipoli to sink an invading Roman force. Churchill was convinced the shrine and its secrets lay in the waters off the proposed invasion beaches, and he lobbied hard for the assault as cover for an archeological expedition. On April 25 a multinational force stormed a number of beaches on the Gallipoli peninsula, but several factors both normal and supernatural caused the attack to falter and the front soon degenerated into trench warfare. Disease and death stalked the exposed positions and for the next nine months thousands of men were fed into the meat grinder adding to the tally of deaths on the road to the New Dawn’s ultimate goal. Kitchener, originally opposed to this operation because he feared it would actually succeed and knock Turkey out of the war, became its biggest proponent once it became apparent it would go nowhere. Under his leadership, the British fed division after division into what was clearly a lost cause. While the land battle dragged on interminably, several transports anchored off the beaches housed divers who scoured the sea floor for traces of the ancient Pontic temple. Hundreds of sorties by allied divers finally discovered the sunken remains of the ancient temple, strangely well-preserved below the waves, and specially designed underwater cameras documented the many frescoes and symbols covering the interior. The discovery of a watertight chest, still intact after millennia, proved to Churchill the value of the Gallipoli Campaign despite costing him his position as the First Sea Lord. Once translated, the knowledge found would be put to use against the U-boat menace the following year. 1916 As the conflict ground into its second year with no sign of victory on the battlefield, New Dawn agents in the belligerents’ governments worked hard to keep people enthused for the war and willing to send their young men to slaughter. Propaganda on all sides emphasized the righteousness of their cause and the brutality of their enemies. Von Falkenhayn, German Chief of Staff and the New Dawn’s principal agent, proposed a strategy of “bleeding France white,” since a traditional war of maneuver was now out of the question. In reality, this strategy was designed to rachet up the death totals. He also proposed a strategy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Although he championed it as a way to cut off England and France from overseas supplies, this was actually an attempt to bring the United States into the war. With its huge manpower reserves, the New Dawn saw America as a vital component in bringing about their global change. Verdun Von Falkenhayn and the New Dawn chose the fortress of Verdun as the place where the French army would be destroyed. On the French side, Joffre obeyed his secret masters and, ordered the courtmartial of any commander who surrendered ground. The stage was set to ensure maximum carnage in the upcoming battle. Von Falkenhayn also had an ace up his sleeve. When Fort Douaumont, the key to the system, was renovated in 1887, German agents infiltrated the firm contracted to perform the work. Using arcane knowledge from around the world, these architects incorporated non-Euclidean angles, mystic runes, and cabalistic symbols into the fort. These “improvements” were designed to attract the attention of supernatural beings, as well as subtly drive insane those stationed there long-term. Having been built on a confluence of ley lines, these supernatural additions to the fort resulted in weirdness and strange happenings in peacetime as well as war. The 11-month battle around Verdun succeeded in killing large numbers of troops. A familiar pattern of trench warfare emerged after the initial German tactics of precision attacks using scouting parties, flamethrowers, and grenades. Along with the carnage came a wide variety of weird manifestations on the battlefield. That the French rotated troops rapidly through the area in the hopes that the shorter time spent on the battlefield made them less likely to encounter weirdness. The Germans took the opposite view and kept their troops in the area longer to minimize the numbers exposed to the unexplainable and supernatural. It was at this time that the term “shell shock” came into being as a way to scientifically explain the hysteria and psychosis arising from exposure to the horrors of the weird war. In December, the New Dawn arranged the replacement of General Pétain, who had waged a mostly defensive, casualty-sparing battle from the fortifications of Verdun. His replacement was General Robert Nivelle, a New Dawn adherent from his time in the Boxer Rebellion. Under Nivelle the French went on the offensive, increasing the casualty rate on the Allied side while regaining the ground lost to the Germans at the outset of the battle. First Battle of the Somme While Verdun consumed the French army, Joffre planned an attack for the British in a quiet sector of the front in an attempt to draw German forces from Verdun. British General Haig suggested a seaborne outflanking attack in Flanders, which Joffre quickly nixed in favor of the frontal slugfest he had planned. Unfortunately for the Tommies who participated in the attacks on the Somme, the area was particularly unsuitable to the implements of modern warfare. To their chagrin, the British found that a high percentage of their artillery shells failed to explode or did little damage to the chalk-hardened ground and the extensive German dugouts beneath. The battle also saw the debut of the tank,which were plagued with mechanical malfunctions that rendered them mostly ineffective. From July until November the two armies hammered at each other, piling the corpses like cordwood across the fields—exactly as the New Dawn had planned. By the time the battle ended, tens of thousands had been added to the tally of the Great War’s appetite for death. While millions fought and died at the front, a millennia-old war was being waged in the shadows by those who saw the real causes of the Great War. The longest-lived branch of the secret Sons of Solomon, the Twilight Legion, thought they had struck a decisive blow against the New Dawn when they managed to kill Lord Kitchener in June 1916. Agents detonated explosives onboard the cruiser HMS Hampshire while Kitchener was on his way to Russia for a New Dawn meeting, killing him and most of the ship’s crew. Unfortunately, other highly placed members of the cabal continued to influence the UK’s participation in the war. The removal of Von Falkenhayn from the General Staff with a new command team consisting of Von Hindenburg and Von Ludendorff also struck a blow against the New Dawn. With these men removed from high-ranking positions in the British and German military, the Twilight Legion and others like them began to hope global disaster could be averted and the weirdness contained, if not defeated.
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Dec 31, 2016 22:20
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Hell Fighters At the outbreak of hostilities, only a few battletested leaders knew supernatural horrors rose in the wake of war. While scattered soldiers and civilians encoutered particular horrors, only a handful recognized the pattern. The sheer size of the Great War and the number of clearly supernatural creatures it awakened quickly became more than these scattered agents could handle. By 1915, the legion decided on a plan that had worked in ages past. Each nation would develop a secret organization designed to fight the increasingly frequent supernatural occurrences on the battlefield. Their job would be to suppress, deny, or explain away magic, monsters, and myth, and eventually, combat their rivals in the cult of the New Dawn. France In France the Bureau des Phénomènes Mystérieux Non Expliqués (Bureau of Unexplained Mysterious Phenomenon) was formed from soldiers and civil servants who had encountered and survived the supernatural in France’s far-flung colonial possessions during the many brush wars prior to the Great War. Within the military itself, the Army’s Catholic chaplains created an informal network to gather information on “spiritual problems” and make use of sympathetic mid-level commanders to fight them. They worked with fringe scientists, but steered clear of occultists like the Golden Dawn, who they viewed as part of the problem, not the solution. Great Britian Great Britain created an informal group nicknamed “MI–13” to handle “unconventional intelligence sources,” a polite euphemism for supernatural matters. Under the direction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, MI–13 tried to learn as much as possible about weird happenings and counter them with unconventional methods. Their primary asset was the Golden Dawn society, more or less drafted into the service of the Crown. Austria-Hungary In Austria there was a great deal of interest in occult matters among the aristocracy, especially those whose ancestral estates lie in the haunted mountains of Transylvania. Consequently, Austria’s Evidenzbureau intelligence service had a surprisingly well-organized supernatural branch known as the Schwarzbureau, based in the old Hradschen Castle overlooking Prague. The Schwarzbureau is small, but it has official authority and archives on weird happenings stretching back to the Middle Ages. Germany The German General Staff resolutely refused to accept accounts of supernatural occurrences on the battlefield, despite having employed weird resources early in the war after seeing the utility of Russian shocktroops in 1917. Unfortunately for the common soldier, the German Command was heavily infiltrated by the New Dawn. The Kaiser, a firm believer in the occult, formed a small group of officers to investigate such occurrences for the benefit of the Second Reich. The Abteilung zur Weiterentwicklung Spezieller Waffen und Truppen (Department of Special Weapons and Troop Development) roamed the front lines, investigating strange occurrences and developing methods to either destroy or exploit the weirdness for the Kaiser. The AbtWESpezWA/Tr managed to stay free of the New Dawn’s influence for most of the war, devoting itself to suppressing battlefield weirdness as well as finding and incorporating the supernatural into the German military as the war progressed and manpower reserves began to fail. Russia Russia combined a long-standing interest in occult matters among the nobility with a highly secretive and paranoid style of government. The Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana, routinely investigated occult groups along with anarchists, socialists, and anyone else who might be a threat to the monarchy. The Okhrana’s effectiveness was stymied, however, by the influence of Grigori Rasputin, a high-ranking member of the New Dawn. Rasputin’s own supernatural powers gave him tremendous influence over the Tsar’s family, and he protected himself and the New Dawn’s agenda by making sure the secret police and intelligence services didn’t look too carefully at occult matters. Because of this malignant influence in the Russian court, the Okhrana often consulted the BPMNE or MI-13 when something weird happened, although those French and British agents sent to Russia never knew who they could trust and who was secretly reporting to Rasputin. As the war effort began to unravel, the Russian High Command, Stavka, turned to the Okhrana’s files of the supernatural in an effort to develop secret weapons to use against the Central Powers. Although Rasputin’s death in December 1916 seemed to put paid to his evil plans, it was a doppleganger who was fished from the frozen Malaya Nevka River. From 1917 until the end of the war, Rasputin assumed a variety of identities both in and outside the various governments, always working to ensure that the bloodshed of the Eastern Front continued. United States of America The United States did not have an official governmental agency to investigate strange happenings prior to the war, instead relying on private entities such as the Pinkerton Detective Agency to act as troubleshooters when a need to arose. With the coming of war and on the advice of the British government, President Wilson ordered the Justice Department to form the Alien Enemy Bureau as part of the War Emergency Division. While officially charged with rooting out disloyal foreigners, its charter of enforcement without trial or judicial oversight made them the perfect organization to deal with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. President Wilson also formed a group known as the Inquiry. Composed of archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and other scholars, the Inquiry’s ostensible purpose was to advise Wilson on the cultures and conflicts of Europe and the Middle East. In reality the group’s cadre of occult experts had a mandate from the President to fight the supernatural anywhere in the world. The Inquiry operated from the American Geographical Society offices in New York. The War at Sea Most high ranking naval officers on both sides considered the pinnacle of the war at sea to be a clash of dreadnaughts but, the true war on water turned on a much less glamorous scale. While the admirals sought and failed to fight titantic gunnery duels between fleets, hundreds of merchant ships plied the murky waters as U-boats searched for prey to sink with deck guns or torpedoes. In 1916 the German Naval Staff began unrestricted submarine warfare to bring the United Kingdom to its knees and out of the war. It wasn’t until April 30, 1917, that the British instituted convoys for merchant ships. Up to that time, each ship was left to fend for itself on the vastness of the high seas. For centuries, ships had disappeared or been found adrift, their crews mysteriously vanished. Now, with heightened levels of fear and death coursing around the globe, the weirdness on the waves only increased. The Allies were not the only ones to suffer from this weirdness. U-boat crews also came faceto- face with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know under the waves. The losses suffered by British merchant shipping reached such a high level that the Admiralty became desperate for countermeasures. Winston Churchill came before the Admiralty with a plan based on what was found off the bloodstained beaches of Gallipoli. The knowledge would be used to summon ancient degenerate races from deep in the depths, directing them to attack and destroy any undersea craft in their domains in return for certain sacrifices. Churchill was sacked from his position as First Sea Lord and sent to the Western Front for suggesting such a thing. Despite their initial horror and disgust, mounting losses at sea led the Admiralty to finally implement Churchill’s plan. Several “weather ships” were stationed in the mid-Atlantic supposedly to improve meteorological forecasting as a means to speed ships’ transit time and present less of a target to the Germans. In reality, these widely spaced ships acted as focusing points for the rituals discovered in the waters of the Dardanelles. Unholy bargains were struck with the weird denizens of the deep, turning them into Allied weapons directed against the German U-boats. These secret allies turned the tide of war in the Atlantic, although the implementation of the convoy system and other technological innovations received credit in the public eye. 1917 Despite an attempt to broker a peace by Germany in December 1916. The following year saw no end to the bloodshed. Only some of the faces leading the war changed. Schemes Within Schemes In France, General Joffre was promoted to Marshal of France, and was replaced by his New Dawn fellow General Nivelle. The governments of both Britain and France changed, and in France a skeptic of the war became War Minister. Agents of the Twilight Legion had subtly warned various power brokers in the French government of Nivelle’s unsoundness as a commander, and they found a willing ear in War Minister Painleve. Painleve’s mathematical studies led him to ancient texts dealing with non-Euclidean geometry and other esoteric subjects, exposing him to the supernatural and making him open to the Twilight Legion’s warnings of the existence of a shadowy organization attempting to bring about a supernatural apocalypse. His investigation of Nivelle’s plan for the 1917 offensive showed grave concerns among the army group commanders, who feared another massive bloodletting was in the works. Despite these warnings, approval was finally given to the planned assaults. With authorization of the Allies’ plans for their annual offensive on the Western Front, agents of the New Dawn ensured that a copy fell into the hands of the Germans. On Germany’s side of No Man’s Land, their troops were dealing with multiple incidents of weirdness spawned by the massive bloodshed, fear, and suffering concentrated in such a narrow area. Under the guise of shortening the lines and tidying up the battlefield, von Ludendorff authorized a pullback of the bulk of the German Army to a line of prepared fortification known as the Hindenburg Line. This allowed the troops a respite from the thousands of corpses, rats, and other unmentionable horrors they faced in their old earthworks. Arras and Vimy Ridge The town of Arras was founded in ancient times near a confluence of sacred Celtic groves. Rome’s conquest of the area resulted in the destruction of many of the druids’ sites. Despite this slaughter and destruction, or perhaps because of it, Rome stationed a large garrison in the area to suppress the many supernatural events that plagued the region. Two thousand years later another war shook the area. Allied planners scheduled an attack near Arras to distract German forces from the main thrust in the Aisne area. The extensive medieval tunnels beneath the city were enlarged and expanded to provide the British and Canadian troops gathering for the coming assault with secure concentration areas. Despite the addition of modern lighting and ventilation to the tunnels, many troops whispered that something was underground with them. Unbeknownst to the Allied officers, a large nest of trench ghouls resided in the hidden ways of the ancient subterranean galleries. The countless unburied corpses on the nearby battlefield allowed the ghoul pack to grow large in both girth and numbers, and they were only too happy to sample the feast quartered on their doorstep. When the battle finally kicked off on April 9th the soldiers were only too happy to quit the underground spaces for the open sky of the battlefield and its known dangers. Another factor shaping the battle was the lingering supernatural forces the druids had identified and sought to suppress in the area millennia ago. The dark energies released by the heaviest bombardment of the war brought many supernatural entities onto the battlefield. Fortunately for the Commonwealth troops on the first day, these struck the German lines first, allowing the Allies to seize Vimy Ridge and break into the Germans’ final defensive line by the end of the first day. The arrival of bad weather, German reinforcements, and weird happenings doomed the offensive, though British troops continued to make fruitless attacks even after the French offensive the battle was meant to support had sputtered to a halt. Second Battle of the Aisne For General Nivelle, the attack on the Aisne was designed to further the New Dawn’s plans before war-weariness overtook the combatants, as had happened so many times in the cabal’s long history. French troops were extensively trained and indoctrinated in the spirit of the attack. Huge stockpiles of ammunition were emplaced for the artillery. Behind the scenes, ancient rituals were enacted to heighten the soldiers’ bravery and bloodlust, especially among the colonial troops. When the battle began on April 16, the troops’ élan was the highest since the start of the war thanks to a special wine ration distributed to the assault troops hours before the attack. The wine was infused with mystical ingredients once given to Norse berserkers. What the French failed to realize, however, was the extent of the maelstrom they would be entering. The Germans occupied steep and heavily wooded ridges honeycombed with caves and mines from centuries of quarrying. They implemented an elastic defense designed to bow and absorb the attack while minimizing French preparatory bombardments. Finally, through their New Dawn contact across the lines, the German commanders had the entire plan of the offensive. The attack kicked off in a sudden snowstorm some said was the product of a weird science device. The assault overran the German front lines within two hours, but the terrain, machine guns, and expiration of the French rituals and elixirs all caused the offensive to collapse by the end of the day. Even so General Nivelle continued to throw troops into the fire until May 7. Starting on April 21st, mutinies occurred throughout the French divisions. Word spread of the unnatural encouragements given to the troops at the start of the battle. Eventually more than 50 divisions refused to carry on with the war. Despite their best efforts to silence such rumors, the New Dawn suffered a serious setback when Nivelle was replaced by General Pétain, a defensive-minded general who had no affiliation with the shadowy organization. The Twilight Legion was instrumental in spreading such rumors, having come to the conclusion that some international cabal was behind the efforts to promote a war being fought not for gains of any kind but instead just to inflict death on a massive scale. America Joins In Both the New Dawn and the Twilight Legion had been working toward bringing the United States into the conflict, although for different purposes. The New Dawn saw US entry as a way to get more bodies into the meatgrinder by the summer of 1918. The legion was determined to end the war and its associated weirdness, and saw the vast manpower reserves and industrial might of America as the best chance to do so. The legion also began to suspect an ulterior motive lay behind the whole conflict. Through the war the New Dawn subverted several U-boat commanders, who carried out unauthorized attacks on civilian shipping. The cabalists felt these attacks would inflame American passions and bring the country into the war. Unfortunately for them, cooler heads in the US government administration prevailed, and America remained aloof. By late 1916, however, New Dawn members within the German government convinced the Kaiser to implement unrestricted warfare on the high seas, which began in January 1917. Also in January, Twilight Legionnaires released a telegraph from the German Foreign Minister purporting to offer Mexico territories lost in the 19th century in exchange for war against America. A lost briefcase at a peace conference sponsored by Henry Ford containing papers damning to the German cause also helped whip up war fervor. Under pressure from certain members of his administration and Congress, President Wilson used all of these reasons to ask for a declaration of war against Germany, which was granted in April. Within months, thousands of American men were pouring into training camps to swell the country’s small army to epic proportions. In June the first troops began to arrive in Europe. The Eastern Front: 1915-1917 The war in the East looked promising to both sides as they entered 1915. For Germany, the belief that the Russians would continue their unimaginative tactics with their vast armies of poorly trained and equipped troops promised the self-destruction of the Tsar’s forces. For the Russians, national pride and the defeats inflicted on the Austro-Hungarians, who had been pushed back into the passes of the Carpathian Mountains, gave hope of some success in the coming year. Of course, these feelings of optimism were carefully cultivated by New Dawn agents on both sides of the front. Intelligence agencies in both Russia and Germany took note of the increasing incidents of weirdness occurring on the battlefields of the East in 1914. Russian troops, in particular, suffere more and more of them as they forced their way through the passes of the shadow-haunted Carpathians on their way to Vienna. Finding modern weapons ineffective against many of these entities, some Russian leaders used the excuse of weapon shortages to suggest arming their troops with long-handled axes, which had proven more effective in these situations. The Okhrana, encouraged by the machinations of Rasputin, sent many agents to the Carpathians to bolster the army’s defenses against supernatural threats. Keeping the agents busy elsewhere allowed the mad monk a freer hand with the Imperial family in Petrograd. Beleaguered by poor logistics, a determined but failed Austro-Hungarian defense, and weird encounters in the snowy mountain heights, the Russian army was unable to break through into the Hungarian plain. By March they had settled into a stalemate in which horrors from local legends stalked the troops of both sides. These creatures in turn were hunted by the Okhrana and Schwarzbureau. A German offensive in February near Masurian Lakes began in the worst winter weather of the war. As in the previous year, the trackless forests swallowed up whole formations. German troops reported advancing through blinding blizzards only to find abandoned Russian equipment, guns, and transport. Official reports deleted the copious amounts of blood staining the otherwise pristine snowfields around these sites. By March German forces were within Russia, with the Tsar’s forces suffering over 50,000 killed and missing and 150,000 captured. Gorlice-Tarnow The Central Powers needed to keep Italy and Romania out of the war, and felt that the best way to accomplish this was with another major victory over the Russians. Occultists labeled “military advisors” and “technical specialists” brought from Berlin provided arcane means to blind Russian outposts, leading to complete surprise when the German offensive began on May 2nd. A unit of creatures of the night rounded up from remote sites in Hungary’s Transylvania province and set loose across No Man’s Land provided an irresistible shock force. Within days a hole more than 10 miles wide had been ripped in the lines, and several Russian divisions broke and fled. Those that fought suffered massive casualties both from natural and supernatural weapons. The front pushed farther and farther eastward, and even the entry of Italy into the war had no slowing effect on German successes. By the end of June, 15 divisions were destroyed and 20 more reduced to skeletons. As the Russian armies streamed back into Russia they were preceded by millions of refugees, prompted to abandon their homes by horrific stories of the supernatural occurrences on the battlefield told by deserters and stragglers. In an attempt to stop the retreat and keep the slaughter going, Rasputin influenced the Tsar to issue draconian punishments for units that broke and fled. By August Tsar Nicholas assumed command of the Russian forces. Despite these measures, the retreats continued throughout the autumn until the October weather made strategic movement impossible and the front settled down. 1916: The Brusilov Offensive Despite its massive losses the previous year, Russia launched a major offensive in June. Rasputin convinced the Tsar that the Central Powers could not mount any further supernatural weapons, and such was his influence that the Tsar approved plans for a major offensive. As the Russian forces moved to the attack on March 17th, the ground turned into a quagmire, trapping the soldiers and dramatically slowing their advance. Despite the transfer of several divisions to the west, Falkenhayn kept his technical specialists in the east. They proved their worth in blunting the Russian attack with spells and arcane rituals. Rasputin and other New Dawn agents in the Tsar’s court pressed to continue the attack, regardless of the early defeats. Russian General Brusilov planned a major offensive for June, incorporating new tactics including the use of “spiritual advisors” sent to him from Rasputin. Originally billed as a means to counter the strange events seen during the Central Powers’ attacks, these advisors soon demonstrated a capacity for much more offensively-related supernatural abilities. Brusilov’s multi-pronged attack yielded a major victory, inflicting losses over 700,000 to the Central Powers while sustaining 550,000. Brusilov’s unauthorized use of supernatural methods to mask his attack and aid his offensive drove a wedge between the Russian command, however, and promised support failed to materialize in time to inflict a decisive defeat against the Germans. In addition, rumors reached Petrograd of the use of the supernatural, souring the victory and causing political unrest when the use of such methods was linked to the Tsar. 1917: Revolution and Collapse Food shortages, harsh winter weather, and continued military failures all combined to feed a growing discontent among the Russian people. Despite the best efforts of the Okhrana, more and more rumors circulated of the supernatural weirdness occurring on the front lines. These stories, coupled with the malevolent presence of Rasputin at court, caused a general dissatisfaction with the monarchy, and combined with the other factors to fan the flames of revolution. In December, Rasputin was murdered by a group of conspirators urged on by the Twilight Legion. In March the Tsar was forced to abdicate,, and a Provisional Government took over responsibility for prosecuting the war. A last-gasp offensive launched in June utilized shock battalions to lead the way for the regular forces. These battalions were specially trained and brought to the front, where they were segregated from the average trooper. This was ostensibly done to keep the shock troops away from the mutinous regular army, but the reality was much darker. The shock battalions consisted of supernatural forces cobbled together from across the Russian empire’s lands. Their presence had to be kept quiet from the average soldier, and by extension the general population. When these shock battalions attacked in mid- June, their supernatural nature proved irresistible and they made good gains. Unfortunately, they could only be controlled to a limited extent. Within two days the regular troops following in their wake refused to continue the advance as they came across increasingly horrific signs left by the lead soldiers. By mid-July the offensive had ended, and by August the Russian forces began to disintegrate. German counterattacks hit mostly empty positions, and the Bolsheviks began disengaging from the war in November. The Western Front: 1918 1918: German Spring Offensive With the removal of Russia from the war in March 1918, the German High Command added more than 30 divisions to their order of battle in the West. This and the sinking morale of the British and French troops and the increasing numbers of Americans arriving each week in France made the Germans anxious for a way to deal a knockout blow to the Allies. The New Dawn had their own reasons for a major offensive in the West. With the fighting all but over in the East and Austro-Hungary suffering a catastrophic defeat that threatened to end fighting on that front, the occultists feared the death toll would drop below that required for the Great Awakening. Ancient manuscripts spoke of a celestial concordance that would facilitate the ceremony. A breakthrough in deciphering these scrolls finally determined this propitious time to be the middle of 1918, in which an eagle would play a major part. The cabal, which once thought this to be the Imperial German Eagle, now thought this might refer to the eagle of the United States. All these signs pointed to a need for massive bloodshed in 1918, culminating sometime in the summer. Unseen Attackers Desperate to push the death toll to unprecedented heights, New Dawn agents in the United States released a potent virus into Kansas in January 1918. By March it was burning through Army encampments at Fort Riley, and reached New York City two weeks later. The Spanish flu, as it came to be known, spread rapidly and quickly became a global pandemic. It killed unknown millions in the first six months after its release, rapidly surpassing the Black Death of centuries before. A New Way of War The German High Command met to design a major, war-winning offensive in November 1917. The major goal was development of a method to break the strategic stalemate of trench warfare. Under the influence of the New Dawn, the Kaiser’s forces eschewed the large-scale development of armored vehicles, as the cabalists feared this would end the war prematurely. So they ruled out the use of massed tank attacks. Having seen the success of tactics involving otherworldly forces during the final battles in Russia in 1917, and with captured examples of these Russian shock troops, certain departments in the German Army promoted a new way to break the stalemate in the West. Highly motivated regular troops trained in special stormtrooper tactics woudl be preceded by supernatural forces designed to disrupt and demoralize the Allies. The British and French lines would fracture, splitting the armies and forcing a peace on the belligerents. Revolutionary weapon designs promoted by New Dawn members began to reach the front line. Light machine guns, improved flamethrowers, and machine pistols gave these troops ways to deal out more death. Specially chosen single or childless men were recruited into these special battalions, segregated from the regular forces, and given special indoctrination, including food laced with mind-altering chemicals. To lessen the chance of friendly fire incidents, the troops observed and trained with the supernatural shock forces assembled for the battle beforehand, acclimating their minds to the sanity-blasting presence of the weirder specimens. Of course, not all those exposed to things beyond description were able to escape with their minds intact. Most were listed as perishing in “training accidents,” but some managed to escape and make it as far as Berlin. The wild tales they spread of the horrors being incorporated into the army fed an undercurrent of unrest back home. Even the capture of these men— and their subsequent execution for desertion or incarceration in an asylum did little to quiet the stories they spread. Kaiserschlacht On March 21st the German army opened its final great offensive of the war. A heavy gas barrage blanketed the British positions, followed up by howling units of unnatural creatures making up the “special” shocktrooper units. A heavy fog summoned by occultists along the line of the first three days, and regular stormtrooper units ruptured the lines, breaking out into open warfare after years of slugging it out in the trenches. Suddenly it seemed Paris was in reach. The best laid plans of any force, however, can never take into account the vagaries of the weird war. Despite the presence of specially assembled units to deal with such occurrences, the assault began to falter as hates, gas clouds, ‘gloms, and other creatures began to manifest on the battlefield. The special shocktroopers—mostly vampires, werewolves, and walking dead—often turned on friendly forces once they had cleared an area of Allied troops, further weakening the German advance. By April 4th, as the British lines crumbled under the impact of these new tactics, General Haig pleaded with General Foch to release French reinforcements to the threatened sectors. The French commander, under guidance from experts at the Bureau des Phénomènes Mystérieux Non Expliqués (Bureau of Unexplained Mysterious Phenomena), declined. Having begun to get specific intelligence as to the New Dawn’s ultimate goal, the BPMNE briefed Foch on the need to reduce the casualty count to stymie some sort of event planned for the summer. While the five main campaigns of the German Spring Offensive achieved some tactical successes, in the main they only served to wipe out the specially trained stormtrooper units and deplete Germany’s manpower. They also exposed more and more soldiers and officers to the weirdness both native to the battlefield as well as that harnessed for use by their armies. This led to greater discontent among the rank and file and widespread instances of pillaging and looting occurred as the pervasive supernatural occurrences affected more troops. The Yanks Are Coming Throughout early 1918 a flood of American units poured into Europe, with a million on the continent by the summer of 1918. Prior to deployment both the Inquiry and the Alien Enemy Bureau briefed General John Pershing on strange happenings on the Western Front. Pershing, who had experienced a variety of weirdness during the Mexican Expedition of 1916, took this information to heart and began worked to reduce the impact on American forces Arriving in France, American units were segregated from their British and French allies. Ostensibly this was because the American public expected their troops to fight under American leaders. In reality it was an attempt to insulate the doughboys from the wild rumors of the supernatural prevalent among the Allies. Several black regiments were transferred to the French army in the spring of 1918 as a means to assess the paranormal nature of the war. While these troops were considered little more than guinea pigs who were more expendable than their white comrades in arms, units like the Harlem Hellfighters and others fought with distinction with the French army. The lessons they learned facing the weirdness permeating the front at the Second Battle of the Marne allowed the US army to develop new tactics and techniques. Army brass felt sure these tactics would see use against the supernatural when the bulk of their divisions went back on the attack. The Allies Strike Back As the German Spring Offensives played themselves out, the American Army finally swung into action. Through the end of May and into June US soldiers and Marines fought in a variety of actions. The size of the divisions, more than three times larger than their Allied or Central Power counterparts, provided the offensive power to smash the German forces. Despite encountering their first taste of the unnatural during the attack to seize Cantigny, the intelligence provided by the Harlem Hellfighters and the Inquiry allowed the doughboys to accomplish their goals. The Third Division moved to defend Château Thierry from a German assault on May 31, holding the Marne River crossings as the French retreated from the gray tide. Strange creatures emerged from the river as night fell, and savage hand-toclaw fighting raged up and down the riverbank until the sun rose the next day. At Belleau Wood, the Marine Brigade attacked even though retreating French pleaded for the newcomers to fall back with them. Despite reconnaissance reports that no enemies were present, a regiment of dug-in Germans troops inflicted heavy casualties when the Marines advanced. Heavy morning mist concealed the heavy use of mustard gas as the US troops fought their way into the shattered forest through a maelstrom of close combat. It was here that the US Marines earned the nickname “Devil Dogs.” General Pershing quickly spread the story that the Germans bestowed the nickname due to the ferocious fighting ability of the Marines, but in truth a more sinister reason lurked within the fog-shrouded woods. Whatever the cause, both sides ceded the cursed spot of land to the weirdness of the war. The Stars Are Right With casualties from the Spring Offensive and the Allied counterattacks totaling over one million, the New Dawn determined the time was right to enact the Great Awakening. Messages went out to the organization’s members directing them to assemble at a location known as Le Tombeau du Géant (Giant’s Tomb), a sparsely populated, rugged site in the Ardennes along the Semois River. The date of this assembly was to be the end of May. Fortunately for the world, the Twilight Legion had aggressively tracked the movements and communications of known or suspected New Dawn members for the last 12 months. BPMNE agents intercepted messages in late May detailing travel plans for several top governmental officials into occupied territory. Under questioning, one such person broke from his story of secret peace talks and confessed to a ritualistic ceremony of unimaginable consequences about to be enacted. German deserters in late May told Allied interrogators of strange preparations being carried out behind the lines. One British intelligence officer happened to be a professor of antiquities prior to the war and recognized the area as an ancient Neolithic site similar to Stonehenge. He quickly alerted his contacts in the Twilight Legion, who made inquiries via MI-13 with their contacts in Germany and Austro-Hungary. Other agents also discovered unusual deliveries of materials being diverted to a remote site in the Ardennes. This information was sent back to France and England, and pointed to something of major arcane significance happening in the near future that must be stopped. An attack by the American First Division was arranged at Cantigny at a time when the defending German forces were in the middle of a relief in place. During the confusion of the assault a small band of BPMNE and MI-13 agents, codenamed GROUP ULYSSES, slipped through the lines. Linking up with a team of AbtWESpezWA/Tr agents in the vicinity of Sedan, they made their way into the forbidding Ardennes. A Star Is Born By June 1st a coven of top tier New Dawn operatives from around the world assembled at Le Tombeau du Géant. Using heretical and damned manuscripts gathered at forbidden sites across the world, they began the week-long ritual required to bring the War to End All Wars to fruition. Harnessing the power flowing through a confluence of ley lines at this ancient site and tapping into the massive death and destruction unleashed in the prior four years, the occultists and their minions were rewarded on the night of June 8th by a bright light in the sky, as a massive gate to elsewhere yawned open. Fortunately for the world, agents of the Twilight Legion were also present. Exactly what happened that dark night has not yet been revealed, but astronomers around the world said the new nova in the constellation Aquila was the brightest ever recorded—though it lasted only two short weeks. End Times After the incident at Giant’s Tomb, the New Dawn effectively vanished. Perhaps some or all of them obtained the power they craved, or perhaps they were defeated. Either way, with the head cut from the serpent the cabal’s influence waned. Individual members survived here and there, but governments now had no shadowy agents of significance urging war for war’s sake. A series of offensives launched by the Allies in July and August using massed tank forces, aircraft, and the untried American divisions smashed the German lines at the Marne and Amiens on August 14th. Ludendorff, sensing the war was over, attempted to tender his resignation. It was refused. The Anglo-French-American steamroller continued on despite the mind-blasting encounters troops experienced crossing the old Somme battlefield. They found a maze of rusting barbed wire, shell holes, and collapsed trenches filled with the bleached bones of the restless dead who had fought there years prior. The Allied attacks continued through August and into the autumn. By September the Germans retreated to their last line of defense, the Hindenburg Line. Despite the faith placed in this series of fortifications, it was broken in several places as a sense of defeatism spread throughout the Kaiser’s troops. With the homefront increasingly wracked by riot and discontent, the Kaiser sued for peace, which took effect on November 11th.
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Dec 31, 2016 22:21
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That's the exact text of the book. My version will be different, of course, but it's still interesting.
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Dec 31, 2016 22:21
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While discussing calibers, one coincidence that I find peculiar is that both the Soviets and the Brits independently came up with a high velocity 57mm anti-tank gun at roughly the same time, ZiS-2 and Ordnance QF 6-pounder. It seems like the British gun was based on an earlier navy gun but the Soviet gun's caliber was a completely new one?
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Dec 31, 2016 22:51
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HEY GAL posted:i am interested in the fantasy austro-hungarians Make them astro-hungarians
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Dec 31, 2016 23:15
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You, uh.... you sure you posted enough words there?
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Dec 31, 2016 23:17
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