Operation Leviathan – Let the Games Begin!
by Andy Chambers, Art by Mike Franchina
Faithful!
Fallen!
Your time has come. Your time to forge the future of Creation, be it for weal or woe, to set trembling feet on the path to salvation or consummate the act of uttermost damnation. It is the time of Operation Leviathan, our very first Trench Crusade Worldwide Campaign.
Yeah, it was inevitable that if you put myself, Tuomas and Jervis on a team together we’d come up with some massive, globe-spanning campaign. Fighting campaigns is at the heart and soul of Trench Crusade and we’ve run many campaigns, including some truly gigantic world-wide affairs, in our time. We know that nothing brings the marvelous community of players across the globe together more than the prospect of beating the hell out of each other for a cause. In this case the cause is going to be the future history of the Great War itself.
In truth, here at Factory Fortress no one has ever wanted the world of Trench Crusade to remain eternally frozen in 1914. The setting was always made to be an avalanche of terror and despair poised to crash down upon the innocent at any moment, and with the release of the Carcass Front campaign box the first stones are sent skipping down the mountainside.
You don’t need to have a Carcass Front warband or even the campaign box to participate in the Operation Leviathan campaign, we’ve written it so it’s open for all warbands – including their variants – to participate. The fate of the world is is being fought for, no one will be staying at home.
Note that we’d originally planned to run Operation Leviathan at a rapid tempo over three weeks, with two map updates per week, but no plan survives contact with the enemy and Carcass Front deliveries have fallen afoul of the Heretic fleets again. We want as many of you to have the chance to play as possible so we’ve decided it would be better to extend the planned worldwide campaign to six weeks with a single map update each week. This won’t reduce any of the other articles we have scheduled to show off participating warbands and reports from the Observers’ decisive battle events. Ironically, we’ll get to show even more of them! Best of luck to all of you, may your Risky rolls be kind and your Injury rolls be cruel.
The set-up
On the Carcass Front, countless rival warbands have been sent to scour old battlegrounds and haunted ruins north of New Antioch in search of clues, artifacts, anything pertaining to the return of the great chained beast of the deeps, Leviathan.
The Faithful say God chained Leviathan in the deep to protect them from its terrible strength. The Fallen say Leviathan was cast down from its rightful place on the Throne of Envy in the Court of the Seven-headed Serpent, some dare whisper that Leviathan’s might could rival the Serpent, Lucifer, himself. One thing is sure, prophecy foretells that Leviathan will rise again and that event will presage the beginning of the Final Days.
Two opposed champions have set the Faithful and Fallen on the path to armageddon; Blessed Bartolomeo, The Martyr of Leviathan and War Priest Charon, The Apostate of Éire.
Blessed Bartolomeo, The Martyr of Leviathan
When the Pope dispatched his relief fleet to the Levant in 1905, one of the first aboard was Black Bartolomeo, a Lazarist Prophet of the Sacred Affliction. He had earned this moniker on the march to Rome by refusing to detour around lost Avignon and emerging covered from head to foot in black blood and soot. By then, he had already gathered a zealous following, who saw in him a leader untouchable by the powers of Hell. That belief was put to the test when the fleet was ambushed by Heretic submarines and every last ship was destroyed in a devastating blow to the Church.
As Barolomeo’s ship sank, the sacred millstone around his neck dragged him into the deepest trench of the Mediterranean. Darkness closed in until he was utterly alone in a featureless void, but then his fading sight beheld ancient columns garlanded by vast chains of rusted iron. The seabed undulated as if a titanic heart lay entombed beneath the pallid sands. The plunging wrecks of seven still-burning ships fell like golden spearheads and as their winged prows pierced the sand, Bartolomeo felt the stirring of something ancient and unholy. Its chained being was a vision of forms beyond the wit of mortal comprehension, serpentine, draconic, and formless all in one. This was Leviathan, and deep in its dark heart, Bartolomeo witnessed its creation wrought upon the fire of Heaven’s anvil and felt its agonised betrayal as it was cast down to this lightless prison for all eternity. As madness took hold, Bartolomeo tore at the cords securing the millstone around his neck and as they snapped, the ocean cast him out, like Jonah from the belly of the whale.
When Bartolomeo awoke, it was atop a swaying mountain of corpses. Hymnals blared from brass horns and the cloying reek of myrrh combined with droning monastic chants revealed his location; the Domus Demetrius, the great corpse-depot of the Levant. He screamed the name of God until a cadre of demetrian monks, fearing him to be some Hellish fiend, raked his body with machine gun fire. Though Bartolomeo’s holy icon armour was salt-corroded and rusted, their bullets could not penetrate and were turned from his flesh. The enraptured monks could only watch as Bartolomeo departed their dominion of death to serve God once more. In one hand he bore a writhing whip wrought from the broken cords of his lost millstone, in the other a fearsome Demetrian corpse-catcher hook.
The reborn Lazarist Prophet roamed the battlefields of the Levant for years, no longer Black Bartolomeo, but Blessed Bartolomeo. Processions of every stripe flocked to his afflicted banner to hear his prophecies of Leviathan, though few among the Church took his ravings seriously. Only when he and his pilgrims looted and burned the library of the revered House of Pillars in 1914, did some worry a deeper truth might lie within his proclamations. Following this heinous act of destruction, Bartolomeo’s pilgrim hosts crossed the Amanus Mountains, granted passage through the gates of Baghras Fortress by the Lazarine Ascension, who pledged yet more soldiers to his fanatical cause.
Now, Blessed Bartolomeo dispatches his pilgrim followers throughout the hinterlands of the Levant and the Carcass Front in search of relics and lost knowledge that tells of bringing Leviathan to the surface. For he knows he must grapple with it, as is foretold in Revelation, and feast on its remains before casting it back to its benighted chasm once more.
War Priest Charon, The Apostate of Éire
Of all the souls coveted by Hell, none are more sought after than those once destined to serve in the light of the Lord, for they are the sweetest of morsels for Hell to devour. One such figure was the Trench Cleric, Cormac Mac Niadh, a famed resistance fighter of Éire who was captured by Heretic Naval Raiders after the fall of Gaillimh. Taken aboard Hymn of Obscenity, the diabolical arts of Hell’s greatest torturers ravaged his flesh, promising an end to his suffering if he would only renounce his faith and embrace damnation.
For ten years Cormac held firm, but as was inevitable, he eventually cursed the name of God and pledged his soul to Hell everlasting. Cormac Mac Niadh was no more, and in his place arose War Priest Charon, an exalted servant of Hell and champion of the Court of the Seven Headed Serpent. For decades, Charon served at the left hand of Zacchur the Conqueror, aiding in the war against his former homeland, but the worms of envy forever gnawed at his corrupted soul. Though Éire was a great prize for Hell, Charon’s wanton appetites saw it only as a petty kingdom to be won, when greater treasures were to be claimed elsewhere.
Though none within the Court can prove it, many suspect it was Charon who allowed the Fianna to learn Zaccchur was aboard Hymn of Obscenity, and, still further, that it was he who allowed them to reach its magazines and destroy the ship. This, coupled with the collapse of the Irish Hellgate, saw the war turn against the Heretics and led to their ultimate defeat. War Priest Charon took command of the broken fleet and led it back to Gibraltar, successfully fending off the remnants of the British Navy surging from their southern ports. For saving the Heretic fleet, Charon was richly rewarded by the lords of Dis, and his cursed star rose in prominence within Hell’s hierarchy. Yet still Charon wanted more. Envious of the demonic lords that set the course of the Great War, Charon aimed to topple those above him and win a seat at the War Council.
Such a feat would require a mighty prize, and thus Charon returned to his former teachings as a War Priest of Saint Patrick and the legends of his casting out the snakes from Éire, the roots of which lay in ancient legends of Leviathan, the great sea-serpent cast down by the Lord Himself. In search of clues and texts that pointed to Leviathan’s resting place, Charon’s flagship, Peccatum Originale, cut a gory swathe across the Mediterranean; ravaging the Athenian coast, murdering thousands on Cyprus, and desecrating the corpse-caves of the Cretan saints. Charon himself is a terrifying figure, clad in armour forged from the blood-soaked plates of infernal iron salvaged from Hymn of Obscenity, with a horned elk-skull mask to mock those of Éire taken by the Path of the Beast. In battle, he bears a mighty seven-barelled falconet-gun and a thorned trench club carved from a branch of the Zaqqum tree to send the souls of his enemies straight to Hell.
Upon piecing together the cosmological circles within the gnostic’s Ophite Diagrams, Charon sailed to the Carrion Coast, where the threads of fate unwoven by his goetic sorcerers spoke of Leviathan rising again. With Hell at his back, the Apostate of Éire will stop at nothing to awaken the vile serpent and yoke it to his cause, for only with such a powerful weapon can he hope to storm the Iron City of Dis and claim the Hungry Throne for himself.
Taking Part in the Worldwide Campaign
Our beloved Observers have already been organising special campaign gaming events for their respective regions to give us the state of the frontlines at the start of the campaign. Their events will continue to occur throughout the campaign and contribute heavily to the final outcomes, so support your local Observers if you can. However, we always want results from players at home, in clubs and at stores so we’ve set things up to receive results from anywhere in the world and update our campaign map throughout the campaign in light of results. The frontlines will be moving and we’ll be doing our best to report on individual games, characters and events as we hear about them with regular updates in The Trench Wire on the campaign progress
Taking part in the campaign is simple, you can play up to one game per day and let us know the result on our website here – Operation Leviathan Reporting. We’ve split the Carcass Front into regions, with each region’s results assigned to a different part of the real world, so if you’re playing in North America, Europe, Asia, South America or Australia you know your results are contributing to your region instead of disappearing into a collective world-wide mosh pit.
Jervis has gone into more details on how the Operation Leviathan worldwide campaign will be run in his article HERE.
Outcomes
The outcome of the world-wide campaign will directly impact the state of the world and events going forwards in our next campaign box. Control will shift, moving the borders on the map and evoking ringing screams from our art colleagues as the maps have to be changed. Most of all the outcome will directly impact the fates of the two opposing commanders seeking out Leviathan; Blessed Bartolomeo and War Priest Charon. One will be raised up and one will be cast down in the events that follow, but just who that will be is for you to determine on the battlefield. New Battlekit and Patrons will be created based on the results.
To arms!
FAQ
Q. Won’t people cheat their results without some sort of verification?
A. Some will, but most won’t. Our past experience tells us that it’s rare and tends to be pretty obvious it’s happened when results start skewing unusually. We have a lot of data on Warband win rates from past tournaments to help adjudicate anything fishy. A formal monitoring/verification process is: A) Somewhat legally fraught in various jurisdictions because everyone wants to use excuses to scrape data, so we won’t be doing that. B) An extra barrier to participating in the campaign for some and that’s also a bad thing. We want you to play and enjoy games Trench Crusade, not spend time cursing out Captcha every day.
Q. Will results have lasting effects on core list building, unit availability, balance, points value?
A. Given that we are collecting minimal data from players, we are not planning on this having any impact on balance changes.
Q. Can I report if my Heretic Legion battles Black Grail? What if my Pilgrims fight other Pilgrims?
A. This event is intended to be a battle between Faithful and Fallen forces. However, we understand that communities may not have an even playing field. In such a situation you and your opponent must roll-off. The player that loses the roll is assumed to have been working (or have tricked into working) for the opposing side.
Andy Chambers
Andy Chambers is a games developer for Trench Crusade and a veteran writer and games designer with over thirty years of experience, best known for his work in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. From 1990 to 2004, he worked as lead designer for three editions of Warhammer 40,000 and a variety of other Games Workshop titles. In 2005, Andy moved into PC gaming to work on Starcraft 2. Since 2009, Andy has worked as a freelancer designing games and writing for a variety of publishers, with notable works including Starship Troopers, Dust Warfare, Dropfleet Commander, and a range of titles for Warlord Games.