Tac

I just ended up deleting the section and retyping it, but it was very weird indeed. It was only one thread, so hopefully it was more of a glitch and won't be a continuing issue.

Yeah based on the radios, we know that the Agarthan Zombies are actually Keepers as well, so it would make sense for them to have a similar sign on their chest. I can't wait to learn more about these characters, they're intriguing!

Yeah absolutely. There are so many places the story could go. One that I am holding onto as something I think would be interesting is if each DLC, they brought in a different mythology and lore, but they were all saying the same thing. Something like religion, for example, where in many parts of the world, people believe the same thing without knowing it, but under different titles. As we traverse different universes, we'll encounter different entities and "gods" but when you boil it down, they're all pushing a near-identical message. I don't think that will happen because it makes future stories predictable, but it's something I think would be interesting.

Not a bad thread, @RequixEclipse! But is there any way that you could reformat it a bit so it's cleaner and easier to read? Also, while there's a lot of information here, you could also bring in the map and characters that you're trying to connect it with to give the readers a better understanding of your overall point :) All in all, good information here, just tie it in!

There are some that we could certainly speculate about, like the Nikolai quote, but in all honesty, the theories at this point are likely to be weak and I'd recommend waiting until we have a better idea of what's happening.

That was the hard thing for me. I'm on my second run-through and it's just... unbearable, to an extent. I wish they'd have done more missions that were shorter, as opposed to the fewer missions that are longer. But, still an enjoyable campaign, I'll just have to slam it out over a longer period instead of one day binge.

I know I'm a bit late to the party, but I definitely agree. The move away from what Zombies used to be, both in the sense of semi-realist to sci-fi and one dimension to inter-dimension, is what kills me. It's hard for me to care about the overarching story when this kind of stuff happens, because what used to be was just simply superior. But, it's Treyarch, and I trust the new guys in charge of the story, so we shall see. Won't be too hard on it when we're less than a week into launch.

It is fixed indeed! But here's the link: http://www.callofdutyzombies.com/index.php?/topic/158871-der-riese-this-is-where-it-all-began/

As we get into the nitty gritty with The Giant, here's a bump for people to learn a bit more about the history of Der Riese :)

My apologies, I may not have specified that I was following the Black Ops III leaks and this was in relation to right before Shadows of Evil launched, when they were making map changes. Sorry to confuse :(

Oh boy, another theorist?! This is gonna be fun. Can't wait to see you around!

I've only ever seen them go from green to red, but I'll certainly see if they go from red to purple!

I saw him near the beginning, but only for a couple seconds and it was on my second. During a conversation you're having with someone, he's sitting down in the background. Beyond that, I never saw him.

I'm on my second run-through right now, but holy cow... Stellar job Treyarch.

Most of the time, absolutely. But the issue being raised here (title aside) is that even though the game is officially released, the amount of time it's been out means that things posted are effectively still leaks for those wishing to experience it on its own, and Easter Eggs can be especially touchy subjects for those wishing to have no aid. As it relates to OP, however, I completely agree. We've got much to come.

I'll say 15 since we shot the Shadow Man a few times ;) Haha but in all seriousness, somewhere near 10. Forgot how important it is to have a good understanding of not only the map itself, but the wall weapons and all the minor things.

Just so you know, I've been adding the radios I find to my thread, so if you come across any, post the video there!

The following is a chronological timeline of the events that take place within the Nazi Zombies storyline. We never thought we’d give ourselves the time to do this, but here it goes. We’ll try to place everything on the table with this. While the exact start of the story can be debated, we begin with the legend that started it all. It’s important to note that the Prologue is critical for understanding the different forms of energies in the story and how everything fits together. In its current stage, the story is going to be missing a few things, in terms of content and sheer formatting. I wanted to ensure I got the story out by Black Ops III release for those who weren’t familiar, though it’ll be heavily updated in the coming days. As of now, please only critique this thread for pre-Black Ops III information, as much is going to be learned over time and I want a base to go off of for the time being. I want to give special thanks to @InfestLithium, @Monopoly Mac, @BlindBusDrivr, and everyone else on the CoDz forums that have helped produce such wonderful content and allowed me to bounce ideas off of. Without further ado, I present the zombies story. Prologue There were two inhabitable planets revolving around a star, Aldebaran, and the population of the Aldebaran system was divided into the master race, known as the Aryans, and subservient lower races. However, as their sun expanded and the planets became uninhabitable, they left. They visited many places in the Universe, with their first stop at planet named Marduk, in what is now the asteroid belt, followed by Mars, and shortly after that, they came to Earth and settled in Sumeria. They split into two factions, some migrating towards the Gobi Desert and the other heading north, landing in the mythical Hyperborea, which some say is modern day Siberia. Eventually, they created the subterranean world known as Agartha, with the capital city of Shambhala, in the Earth’s Core, Hollow Earth. As the center of intellectual progress and enlightenment, and is powered by the Black Sun, or Schwarze Sonne, a black star located within the Earth itself said to contain and radiate immense power, called Vril Energy. It’s been said that there many entrances to Agartha, including Antarctica, the Pyramids of Gaza, and the city of Shangri-La in the Himalayas. Over time, evidence began to show that this Vril was the very lifeblood of the Aryans; the source of powerful psychic and technological advancements among their race. When employing this energy source via Vril rods, they could achieve great telekinetic abilities and through great acts of medicine, could live up to the age of one thousand years. However, if used the wrong way, those rods could be used for great destruction. 115: The Zombies Story In the 1600s, a man named J. Frank, born April 14, 1639, founded a very small Western town in Monument Valley along the Utah and Arizona border in the United States. There were only a few things for the inhabitants, such as a church, candy shop, bank, town square, saloon, and even a jail. One of the inhabitants, Bob, was hanged in April 1888, and another, a churchgoer named William, died on October 25, 1887. However, the most notable inhabitant was the famous scientist, Michael Faraday, the father of electromagnetism, and his wife Sarah. Faraday was often considered the father of electromagnetism, creating the electrical grid for this town. However, he always believed there was something more. Through reading books like The Coming Race and his subject expertise, he believed that the forces of matter all must have had one common origin, and that origin was Vril. With this newfound knowledge, he used this power to create two devices, the first being the Paralyzer. It was a weapon that, when fired, slowed zombies down, almost as if paralyzing them, until they disintegrated altogether. The second device was known as the Time Bomb, which allowed the user plant the device at a particular reference point in time and space and when activated, certain things would reverse back to that same reference point. The town was somehow transported into an empty cavern under a diamond mine in Angola, Africa (and over time the shifting of tectonic plates started to squeeze the town until it was ingrained in the walls of the cavern and the mansion began to get crushed). Sarah, Faraday’s wife, had died before this event and her soul bounded within the house as it traveled across the globe, haunting the mansion from that point forward. Faraday, however, hadn’t been the only one doing research on progressive technologies. As Germany was on the eve of war, a brilliant European scientist by the name of Doctor Ludvig Maxis created an elite, top secret research team known as “Group 935”. The purpose of the group was simple: To Improve the Human Condition. It had become evident that great advancements in technology would be the key to ensuring a safer, more prosperous world for all. Needing an assistant that could withstand the pressures of such great science, Dr. Maxis chose a long time friend and genius doctor, Edward Richtofen. World War II came upon the human race and no one had ever seen anything like it. To aid the German military, Group 935 began creating Wonder Weapons, or Wunderwaffe, in the Der Riese Waffenfabrik factory near Breslau in Lower Silesia, Germany. While the factory was commonly known as simply "Der Riese", meaning "The Giant", the full title translated to “The Giant Weapons Factory.” As the world around the Der Riese Waffenfabrik operated regardless of the research, the scientists were sworn to secrecy, fully knowing they’d never see their families again in the name of the greater good. Inside Group 935, Dr. Richtofen and Dr. Schuster, a research assistant from England, began work on a prototype teleporter they called the Matter Transference Device, or M.T.D., implementing Element 115 to provide a massive amount of energy. On December 4th, 1939, they conducted their 151st test by moving a 10 gram walnut three feet away by energizing a microgram of Element 115. Upon its success, it became the first working man made teleporter in history. The process of teleportation looked somewhat like an hourglass, where there was a full object at the beginning and as the energy broke the object down to a molecular level, it became more and more compact before it passed through the point at the center of the glass, the absolute zero point, and began to reconstruct on the other side. The absolute zero point turned out to actually be another dimension, known as Aether. Dr. Richtofen went to Dr. Maxis with the news of a working teleporter, but he was not pleased, insisting that Dr. Richtofen continue with the crucial experiment he was to be working on: the Wunderwaffe DG-2. Dr. Richtofen remained unconvinced, expressing his concern with the experiment, asking what business it was of theirs to produce very powerful weapons if they are trying to “improve the human condition.” Dr. Maxis's patience grew thinner and he revealed a great secret. Group 935 had struck a backdoor deal with the Nazi Party to produce new weapons for them while they provided Group 935 with funding and equipment for various projects, including the specified weapons. Dr. Maxis knew that if other Group 935 members were to find out about this, they’d be inclined to defect to their countries of origin, so he insisted that no one was to know of this proposition, believing that the war would end shortly. However, Dr. Richtofen believed that Dr. Maxis was a fool for creating such a deal with the German government. Despite mounting pressure from Dr. Maxis to desist their tests, Dr. Richtofen and Dr. Schuster continued their work on the M.T.D. They felt that they should stick together and complete this project on their own, due to the belief that Dr. Maxis would steal their findings and technology to perfect and publish for himself. Later, on January 4th, 1940, they felt the machine was capable of testing on a human subject. Despite Dr. Schuster's hesitations, Dr. Richtofen persisted in attempting to transfer himself to a receptacle station thirty yards away, behind a cinder-block wall. However, when the machine was activated, instead of landing at the mainframe they had set up, Dr. Richtofen was cast into space and found himself in a circular pressurized cavern within the moon’s crust. In the center of the chamber was a black, obsidian-like pyramid that was using an unknown energy. Without Dr. Richtofen knowing it, he had stumbled upon an ancient artifact from the Vril-ya, long before they had come to settle on Earth, and the name for it became the Moon Pyramid Device, or the M.P.D. Attempting to get a better understanding of the object, Dr. Richtofen touched the device, causing it to violently shock him. While he did not know it at the time, that touch formed a connection to the ancient artifact, allowing the evil stored within to crawl into his mind. As Dr. Richtofen continued to study the pyramid, he noticed that whispers began to grow in his mind. Just as Dr. Richtofen discovered that the pyramid had a hollow interior, the power from the artifact teleported him to Earth once again. Rather than ending up back in his lab, he was sent to a hidden jungle in the Himalayas. Upon teleportation, he heard odd sounds, almost like a mob, and ran for his life, stumbling upon a village protected by massive traps. Perplexed by how the Doctor was able to reach the village, the inhabitants treated him more or less as a god. Richtofen had stumbled across the mythical Shangri-La, doing what the Nazi government had failed to do a year earlier when they funded an SS trip to Tibet to study the geography, climate, and general culture of the region. However, some who knew of the trip, such as Heinrich Himmler, knew that the real purpose was to determine whether the region had once housed the Aryan race, taking cranial measurements and making facial casts to help determine this. However, after many tests, they weren’t able to find anything conclusive and were forced to return to Germany with very little. During Dr. Richtofen’s lavish stay, he discovered that Shangri-La was one of the few places on Earth containing a supply of Element 115 and within the caverns that lead to the former underground homes of the Vril-ya, an immense amount of it was ripe to be harvested. While there, the villagers also constructed a ziggurat, or a massive temple outfitted with a shrine at the very top, dedicated to the Doctor. With this position of power, he got the inhabitants to mine this element for him. However, some the greatest things he learned during his time at Shangri-La were unknown. To return to Group 935’s German headquarters nineteen days after his arrival, he used the teleporter housed inside the temple. By January 23rd, 1940, Dr. Schuster was confident that Dr. Richtofen had been destroyed in the teleportation process and was about to announce the project a failure. In the nick of time, an enthused Dr. Richtofen rushed into the facility raving about his adventure, only to fall on the confused ears of Dr. Schuster. Rather than sit and fully explain the events, Dr. Richtofen told Dr. Schuster to get in the prototype teleporter to show him the Moon Pyramid Device, though he conveniently left out the events of Shangri-La in his description. From that point forward, the two of them and select others began the creation of a moon facility, based around this MPD. During all this, there was an increase in demand for better and more powerful weapons. Although this placed mounting pressure on Dr. Maxis, he was beginning to realize that he had struck gold with the deal Group 935 made with the Nazi Party. Many different scientific groups were created to begin the new Wunderwaffe Program. The Nazi scientists created the Uranium Club, which was a nuclear project with the purpose of weaponizing nuclear fission technology. They worked on the DFS 228 & 346, which were rocket-propelled aircraft that would culminate in the development of a supersonic reconnaissance planes. They were also working on the revolutionary Rocket U-Boat, which would carry and shoot ballistic missiles. These missiles were known as A4 rockets, later reclassified as V-2 Rockets, which were designed to transport satellites into low Earth orbit but also doubled as military missiles. One of their largest feats, physically at least, was the Extreme Tank. It focused on the pre-prototype super-heavy Landkreuzer P 1500 Monster, a 1,000-ton tank that would act as a transport for the 800mm Schwerer Gustav artillery gun. Previously, after the heartbreaking German defeat in World War I, inspiration to rediscover ancient technologies resulted in the emerging of Germany’s three main secret occult societies: Vril, Thule, and Black Sun Societies. In 1919, and for decades to come, a few female mediums met with the three secret societies and told them that they were receiving telepathic messages. After translating the communications, they found it was in the ancient language from extraterrestrial beings from a distant star known as Aldebaran. As the communications were translated, it was discovered that they were in fact instructions for building a flight craft. This flying craft would run on these ancient technologies and by 1922, these three societies began development of what they hoped would be a working prototype. Inspired by these tests, Group 935's largest project represented the very pinnacle of Kammler’s occult and super-secret SS Wunderwaffe empire. Dr. Maxis initiated the tests under the title Die Glocke, or, “The Bell,” which consisted of a teleporter/time machine and an anti-gravity propulsion system. The teleportation device was 9 feet in diameter and 12-15 feet tall, shaped like a bell. In 1941, development of the Die Glocke/Vril anti-gravity propulsion system began, which was one of many successors to the Vril, Thule, and Black Sun Societies's 1922 project. It was an all-new spacecraft, known as the Vril-1, where two 3cm lead cylinders counter-rotated Element 115, which they code-named “Xerum 525”. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that a conduit was needed to channel the energy that was being produced. For this, they began construction on the Fly Trap, which was fed by high-voltage underground cables running to the heart of the structure and doubled as the test ring for the Vril-1. On January 20th, 1942, Dr. Maxis put another project into effect. Named “Datenbedjensteter,” translated to Data Servant, he kept recorded files regarding his personal life and existing experiments. In the first file he ever created, he mentioned his daughter, Samantha Maxis, who was born between 1932-1936 to a mother who died of unknown reasons. Due to this, Dr. Maxis took her with him everywhere and intended to keep a close eye on her while working. However, being the leader of Group 935 and being so absorbed in his research, he unintentionally neglected Samantha. This neglect led to Dr. Richtofen running tests on her through sadistic games he would force her to play, while Dr. Maxis had no idea. In an attempt to regain ties with his daughter, Dr. Maxis bought Samantha a puppy named Fluffy. He explained to her that Fluffy was actually pregnant, but was hesitant in allowing her to keep the puppies as having even just one took great responsibility. Simultaneously, with experimentation, Dr. Maxis and Dr. Richtofen created a ghoulish monster they’d never encountered before. It was a zombie; half dead, but half alive. They came to the conclusion that Element 115 was able to partially revive dead human beings, and this sparked an idea inside Dr. Maxis. He wanted to engineer an undead army that he could unleash anywhere necessary in the world, so through more experimentation, the two scientists incorporated these zombies into their work on the Die Glocke teleporters. Seeing as Dr. Richtofen had already completed a teleporter, he began sabotaging the experiments to keep Dr. Maxis from doing the same. One test subject had exploded when they kick started the machine and after some progress, multiple had successfully vanished, but failed to reappear at the preset mainframe. Dr. Maxis’s end goal was for these zombies to reappear at the mainframe and be capable of adhering to demands. After more attempts, the former part of his wish came true: the test subjects managed to survive teleportation. However, when they came out the other side, the subjects would only listen to Maxis for a short period of time before their instincts took over and they attempted to kill the scientists, resulting in the handlers shooting them dead right where they stood. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Maxis made another entry to the Data Servant detailing all the known locations of meteoric Element 115. One of the obvious locations that was listed was Der Riese, though there were also a few non-Group 935 locations. One place was Area 51, or Groom Lake, in Nevada. Group 935 Operatives in the United States informed Dr. Maxis that the Americans obtained Element 115 through the Chicora Meteor Event in Pennsylvania in 1930, giving them their primary cache to experiment with. Additionally, Dr. Maxis had somehow come to know that the Moon held Element 115, though he wasn’t aware that Dr. Richtofen and the others had been creating a facility on the lunar surface. To keep Dr. Maxis ignorant, he set up a Group 935 outpost on a Siberian island so he could easily navigate to the Moon and back. However, there was something very special about this Siberian island, and he knew it. It was the original Hyperborea, where the Vril-ya once resided, and he would spend time here to research the origins of the voices in his head. Another location with meteoric 115, and perhaps the most famous, was known as Tunguska. Occurring in the early 1900s, central Siberia was struck by a cataclysmic meteor that was one-thousand times greater than the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima. Known as the Tunguska Event, it left the surrounding area of Tunguska charred and burnt to cinders. While the largest portion of the Tunguska meteor was the one that ravaged the wilderness around the Siberian tundra, fragments supposedly landed across the globe, including the final location on Dr. Maxis’s list, known as Shi No Numa. Upon discovery of this meteor in Pingfan, Manchuria, the Japanese had set up a similar organization to Group 935, named Unit 731. Construction of their facility around the meteor began, eventually naming it the Rising Sun Facility, or to some, Shi No Numa. For secrecy and security, the facility's official cover story was that it was actually a lumber mill, and because Unit 731 was also running experiments on humans, they continued with the cover story and referred to their human test subjects as "logs". Working at Shi No Numa was a Captain of the Imperial Japanese Army, named Takeo Masaki. He was born into wealth. His family dynasty dated back several centuries, and throughout that time they had been highly decorated Samurai and Bushi, and Takeo was no exception. On the inside of Takeo’s eyelids was the Japanese proverb “Life is light when compared to honor,” because for Takeo, life had no meaning if not to perfect one’s discipline and to reveal a warrior’s true character and honor. Finally fed up with his entire family for their insolence, he slaughtered them to further his own enlightenment, making him a perfect fit for the task of human experimentation. The Japanese contacted the Reichstag High Command and explained to them a meteor similar to the one at Der Riese had fallen and using the power of this meteor, they were beginning their newest weapon. Before anything, in case of an infiltration, Group 935 had convinced them to build what was known as The Flogger. To help create the weapon mentioned by the Japanese, Dr. Maxis brought a few scientists with him and during work, secretly took the blueprints and brought them back to Der Riese, where Dr. Maxis completed the weapon and named it the Ray Gun. Dr. Maxis made a Data Servant file detailing all the information regarding the new weapon, stating that it had been designed to work on microwave technology releasing plasma between 220V and 230V. Being far too busy to fix up some issues with the Ray Gun, he brought in a scientist, Dr. H. Porter, to create the second generation Ray Gun that would fix a few flaws, including excessive peripheral damage. With the Dr. Maxis’s approval, Dr. Richtofen began development of a weapon of his own. Named the Wunderwaffe DG-2, which stood for Die Glocke second generation, it used the same technology as the original Die Glocke, being powered by Element 115. It turned the element into a chain of electrical energy at 220 volts, killing up to ten zombies with one pull of the trigger. Once completed, they moved on to the third generation, the DG-3 JZ, and Dr. Richtofen began writing books about them. Concerned with the lack of funding, Dr. Maxis sent a letter to the Reichstag High Command. He said that the early tests in Der Riese had been beyond expectations and it would be foolish to cut their funding. One of those tests included the Wunderwaffe DG-2, which was supposed to be mass produced and placed in the hands of the German Army, in the attempts to end the war as quickly as possible. Dr. Maxis also mentioned the recent complications with the zombies, and due to lack of Element 115, teleporter testing had come to a halt and these problems couldn’t be solved. He informed them of the American’s Element 115 supply and reiterated the importance of staying ahead of the United States, which would require not only funding, but finding a regular supply of Element 115. After the completion of the Moon facility in 1943, which they called Griffin Station, Dr. Richtofen revealed to the scientists of Griffin Station that he decoded ancient hieroglyphics on various alien artifacts and objects, including the pyramid, all pointing to the origins as the Vril-ya. Dr. Richtofen knew that the pyramid was a stable gateway to Aether, so he appointed Dr. Groph as head scientist to discover how the device worked. He announced that Dr. Maxis and Group 935 no longer controlled them, repurposing them for his own agenda while he kept up appearances at inside the organization. With thunderous applause, the fate of Group 935, and consequently the world, was sealed. While there, Dr. Richtofen began production on a new weapon known as the Quantum Entanglement Device, which was a weapon capable of manipulating space-time and causing different events to occur. Another weapon being produced was the Wave Gun, which could be split into two weapons. When used as a single weapon, it caused zombies to cough blood and slowly expand until they explode, while the dual version shot electric balls. After completion, Dr. Richtofen sent it to the same scientist that upgraded the Ray Gun, Dr. H. Porter, in order to become even more effective. By 1943, Germany had invited Dr. Freidrich Steiner to join Group 925. Dr. Steiner, a scientific genius, had earned a collection of degree by the age of twenty, and even caught the eye of the SS. Throughout the war, he was to be involved in multiple projects in order to find unconventional solutions to win the war. One of these projects was to pick up where Dr. Maxis had failed and investigate various techniques of mind control on zombies, including breaking into their subconscious by playing film for them containing subliminal messages, at Kino der Toten, a theater in Berlin. It was all in an attempt to take control of the zombies to create the undead army that Dr. Maxis, and the Reichstag High Command, desired. In the same year, Dr. Blome had experimented plague vaccines on concentration camp prisoners, and had Group 935 looking his way. With the help of Dr. Blome, Dr. Steiner’s other project was to create chemical weapons in Der Riese, which they did through the highly volatile nerve agents known as Tabun and Sarin, the latter of which can even cause death as soon as one minute after ingestion of a lethal dose. To help fund their chemical endeavors, Group 935 turned to a chemical manufacturing company by the name of GK. The name of the chemical they were creating was to be GKNOVA; GK for the funding corporation involving compound NOVA. Dr. Steiner and others in the tests had created three versions of the chemical. Stability was a rather large issue for them, as they they were still attempting to achieve it when tests on version 4 were ran. That did not deter them though, as they still had hopes for the fourth version. The dispersion techniques also had to be tweaked slightly, but the results had come back positive and encouraging. They tested the toxin on chimpanzees, but believed that the next step was to experiment on humans, in order to speed their research. They began heavy genetic modification and infused Nova-6 into humans, putting them in containers and shipping them off to Group 935 locations around the world to be tested in the environments and see if they can withstand nature’s fury, such as Shangri-La in the Himalayas, Eagle’s Nest in Siberia, and the very work site of the theatre in Berlin. Though they had originally been working at the Der Riese research compound, Group 935 had restationed Project NOVA to the abandoned Berlin movie theater by September of 1944, allowing for Dr. Steiner to stay in one place for his research. On August 9, 1945, Operation August Storm began. The 700,000-strong Manchurian army were invaded by one million Soviet soldiers, one of which being Nikolai Belinski. As a child, Nikolai wanted to become a Cosmonaut, but instead became a carpenter and owned a pig farm, afterwards giving it up to become a politician with an unorthodox way of doing things. He increased his rank in the Bolshevik Party by marrying politically and killing the next man in line. However, when he killed his fifth wife with an axe to the neck, the high ranking official she was having an affair with knew of his violent tendencies with women and made it public. His reputation spread quickly through the party and it wasn’t long before Stalin himself heard about the psychopathic politician. Being as paranoid as Stalin was, he immediately got nervous and ordered Nikolai to the front line. Nikolai got severely depressed and tried to forget his troubles with bottle after bottle of vodka. While in the invasion of Manchuria, he wandered off on his own and stumbled upon the Rising Sun Facility, or Shi No Numa. The soldiers in Manchuria hadn’t expected a Soviet offensive until spring of 1946, so they were utterly shocked to see this soldier. Nikolai was so drunk that he didn’t try and put up a fight, so he was captured right then and there. Nikolai told Dr. Richtofen and Takeo Masaki that he was in Manchuria to secure all their facilities, so Dr. Richtofen knew he had to act fast. To ensure he had a broad range of test subjects, he subdued Takeo and Nikolai and left Manchuria for good and went back to Eagle’s Nest. By September 2, 1945, Dr. Richtofen had acquired three of his test subjects to experiment on; a Mexican who had died because their spleen fell out from an especially violent experiment, Nikolai Belinski, and Takeo Masaki, who was given the subject name N3WB. By September 10, however, Dr. Richtofen wasn’t having much luck on either of them. Meanwhile, sometime earlier, an American spy named Peter McKay infiltrated Group 935, posing as a research assistant out of Munich. He was originally stationed at Der Riese but was eventually transferred to Verruckt, or the Wittenau Sanitorium in Pankow, Berlin, Germany, which was the spiritual predecessor to Kino der Toten, except using much more primitive tacts like electroshock therapy. While in Der Riese, he originally had the job of securing all visible research on Element 115 technology, but by the time he was transferred, all previous attempts at securing this research had failed. Overseeing his stay in Group 935 was his handler, Cornelius Pernell, who Peter was supposed to be in regular contact with. However, when Peter was transferred and became unresponsive, Pernell and the American Office of Strategic Studies believed his cover was blown and sent in an extraction team led by a Marine recon soldier, Tank Dempsey. Tank Dempsey was part of an elite infantry unit of the Marines, known as the Marine Raiders. Back in the day, during the early raids before the main invasion in the Battle of Peleliu, his unit was captured and he spent 2 weeks in a rat infested bamboo cage submerged in malarial water. Eventually, he gnawed his way through the cage, and then gnawed his way through his captors armed only with a bobby pin and his Medal of Honor which he keeps secreted in various body cavities. He laid low for a bit in normal civilian life, just to be sent back into covert missions again. He, along with at least two other Marine Raiders, John and Smokey, were selected for this top secret mission of extracting Peter from Verruckt. The extraction team arrived and on September 10, 1945, Dempsey went on what was to be a quick solo mission to scout out the area. However, during the operation, he was spotted and captured by the German holdouts defending the facility, and the rest of the extraction team awaited his return. When Dempsey didn’t return that same day, the extraction team continued to push forward and decided to enter the facility and retrieve Peter. However, as they entered, they found that Peter had left and zombies were upon them. As they tried to fight their way through the asylum, Smokey became infected and John was forced to kill him, and by September 17, 1945, everyone had been killed by the first batch zombies. That same day, Tank Dempsey had been delivered Dr. Richtofen for experimentation to replace a Mexican test subject that Dr. Richtofen killed. By September 20, Dr. Richtofen began noticing how Dempsey, Takeo, and Nikolai had changed through experimentation. They each showed unique side effects compared to previous test subjects. Their baseline mental and psychological state was intact, but all of their specific memories were erased. Dempsey kept yelling and breaking the restraints; Takeo was mentally shattered by his own attempts to block out the commands issued by the brainwashing; and Nikolai seemed to respond well to a stimuli made primarily of vodka. While Nikolai was no stranger to the substance, the increased testing on him from this substance generated his dependency on the alcohol. During the chaos of the Der Riese experiments, Dr. Maxis began to form new opinions about those around him, creating two near-simultaneous data servant entries between 1942 and 1945 related to these. He saw that his assistant, Sophia, was beginning to get increasingly attached to him. He admitted to finding her attractive, but due to his wandering thoughts, she was becoming too much of a distraction and Dr. Maxis knew he should send her away. In the other entry, Dr. Maxis began expressing regret over re-inviting Dr. Richtofen to be part of Group 935. He openly cited two different reasons for this regret, the first being limited amounts of the element and Dr. Richtofen’s insistence on accelerating the project timelines. The second mentioned Dr. Richtofen watching Dr. Maxis, Samantha, and Sophia, even creating an unorthodox explosive weapon known as the Monkey Bomb, that screams when set aflame. However, despite all this, it became clear to Dr. Maxis that his long history of working on Element 115 was beginning to catch up with him, which is what likely contributed to the paranoia with Sophia. He noted the increasing levels of delusion in his mind but decided to continue his work, dismissing the unfavorable acts by Dr. Richtofen as flawed beliefs. In a clear example of Dr. Richtofen’s yearning to accelerate the projects, between September 20th and October 1st, 1945, he learns that Dr. Maxis had not been mass-producing the Wunderwaffe DG-2 as he had promised he would. For Dr. Richtofen, this is the final straw. Now, for at least the second time, Dr. Maxis had undermined Dr. Richtofen’s work for his own personal gain. Dr. Richtofen then informs Dr. Groph, the head scientist at Griffin Station, of the update to his plan on what to do with Dr. Maxis and Samantha (Security Protocol 935): personally dispose of them. To unknowingly demonstrate this new delusion that Dr. Maxis had, he began to use his own daughter’s companion, Fluffy, as a test subject for the teleporter. He and Dr. Richtofen put her into the test chamber and activated the teleporter, only to find that something had gone awry. Dr. Maxis suspected that Dr. Richtofen had incorrectly calibrated the teleporters, but Edward lied and said it was calibrated to Dr. Maxis’s specifications. All they could see was some sort of electrical force inside the test chamber, so Dr. Maxis demanded the chamber door be opened immediately. Within the chamber, Fluffy had been transformed into a ghoulish monstrosity that resonated with energy, becoming the first hellhound. At that same moment, Samantha entered the labs, wondering what her father was doing with her dog. When she saw what had become of Fluffy, Samantha immediately ran towards her. Dr. Maxis was able to grab and calm her, and when they attempted to exit, Dr. Richtofen slammed the doors shut. Seizing the opportunity, Dr. Richtofen activates the teleporter and thrusts Dr. Maxis and his daughter into space-time. At Griffin Station, as Dr. Groph and Dr. Schuster awaited Dr. Richtofen’s return, Griffin Station’s computer system alerted them of an immediate threat. It seemed that rather than being destroyed by the teleportation process, Samantha had been teleported to the Moon. In a flurry of action, Samantha began roaming the facility. She ran towards the M.P.D., open from when the two Griffin Station scientists had gathered the required souls, and placed herself inside it, which swallowed her whole and shut her within. When they alert Dr. Richtofen of this, he merely saw this as a minor setback, assured that they will not be held back by the actions of a child. Moreover, he concluded that if Samantha had survived, then so too had Dr. Maxis. While they knew that Samantha was sent to Griffin Station, they had no idea that Dr. Maxis been sent to an unknown and mysterious tunnel. Given some time, Dr. Groph and Dr. Schuster used Griffin Station’s teleportation system, and a sample of Dr. Maxis’s DNA, to locate him and bring him to the receiving bay. Dr. Maxis, was bewildered and enraged, yet not surprised that Dr. Richtofen, Dr. Groph, and Dr. Schuster had been operating in secret. Given only the time to ask how he got to where he was, the facility’s guards drug him to the pyramid as Dr. Groph explained exactly what had happened at the facility. Dr. Maxis, however, was no fool. In the time he had spent fending for his life in those tunnels, the dream to “improve the human condition” was dead, and Dr. Maxis’s creation had to be destroyed. While the three doctors at Griffin Station had brought Dr. Maxis back in hoped of him coaxing Samantha out of the pyramid, he had different plans. The one thing he asked his daughter to do was to kill them all, and as Samantha giggled in demonic glee from within the pyramid, one of the scientists shot Dr. Maxis dead for what he told her to do. However, instead of truly dying, Dr. Maxis’s soul was released and uploaded into the Griffin Station mainframe, allowing him to control the entire facility without anyone knowing. With thinking Samantha churned in a tide of rage and power and with the fate of the world in the hands of this girl, Dr. Groph spoke his last known words: “We are all doomed.” With Samantha now securely in the M.P.D., she became the newest ruler of Aether. With her newfound ability to raise and control the dead, she had the zombies overrun the Der Riese facility in hopes of dealing with her decided target, Dr. Richtofen. Himself, Tank, Takeo, and Nikolai were all able to escape the outbreak, but the doctor somehow informed the other three to go to Shi No Numa at a later time than himself, though the reason he did this is also unknown. In the immediate aftermath of the outbreak, a massacre ensued between two entities, one of which was likely the Russians and the other being unknown. Once the massacre was complete, it was followed by a standoff with American forces, which the Russians are assumed to have won. The purpose of the massacre, though, was to gain knowledge on Dr. Steiner’s whereabouts. However, many months before the massacre and standoff,, Dr. Friedrich Steiner had actually left Der Riese and was sent by freighter to deliver NOVA 6 gas that would be used against command and control centers around the world, like Washington D.C. and Moscow. To complete this objective, he was required to travel north up the Elbe River in Germany and into the North Sea, eventually making his way to the Arctic Circle. An individual involved with the massacre and standoff, though, was a man named Pavel Gorki, the likely owner of the company that provided funding for Germany’s Nova 6 research, GK. He contacted his cousin, Colonel Lev Kravchenko, and informed him of Dr. Steiner’s movements. Kravchenko then reported this to his mentor, General Nikita Dragovich, and they began making plans to retrieve Dr. Steiner. As Dr. Steiner traveled through the Arctic Circle, British aircraft began bombing his location and trapped him in the ice. He and his men attempted to salvage what they could, but their efforts were futile, as Germany still surrendered and failed to win World War II. The freighter was left alone in the Arctic Circle and realizing the inevitability of being captured or killed, Dr. Steiner switched allegiances and agreed to fight for the Russian cause so that he may live. The Russian extraction of Dr. Steiner and all the NOVA 6 they could get their hands on was dubbed Operation Olympus, carried out by the 3rd Shock Army Special Operation Unit and their leader, Dragovich. However, after arrival, it soon became clear that the Russians were not the only one’s seeking the German weapons. When American and Russian forces battled after the massacre at Der Riese, the Americans had too learned of what was housed in the motionless freighter in the Arctic. They contacted the British government and soon thereafter, they also began making plans regarding Dr. Steiner and the ship. Upon arrival by the British, the ship and all of its contents were destroyed on direct orders from Winston Churchill, though Dragovich and Kravchenko were able to escape not only with samples of the gas, but the very creator of it: Dr. Steiner. From there, the Ascension Group was born. Headed by Dr. Steiner himself, but organized by Dragovich, the Ascension Group’s main purpose was working with NOVA 6. Colonel Kravchenko’s cousin, Pavel Gorki, would later start Gorki-Korolev Medical (GKM) as a front company to move this NOVA 6 to sleeper agents in the United States. Out of the rocketry scientists, a handful of them included Dr. Mikhail Ivanov, a Computer Systems Engineer; Dr. Gavril Petrov, a Launch Facilitator; Dr. Stefan Fedorov, the future Chief ICBM Weapon Directive Executive; and Dr. Boris Titov, a Nuclear Fission Engineer. Through Operation Osoaviakhim, the Ascension Group was also able to harness some of the great Nazi minds and put them to work for the Russians. This was the Soviet resurrection of the German NOVA6 Program. Between the time that had Peter left Verruckt and Der Riese had suffered from an outbreak, his handler, Cornelius Pernell, his handler, managed to get him a message. Pernell told Peter to find Dr. Richtofen and Dr. Maxis and that Der Riese must be contained, though for an unknown reason, Peter did not travel to Der Riese, but instead to Shi No Numa. Dr. Richtofen, having fled the Der Riese outbreak to Shi No Numa, knew that his time was short before Tank, Takeo, and Nikolai would show up. Somehow, he knew that Peter would go to Shi No Numa and after arrival, he killed Peter and hung his body to make it look like a suicide. By the time that Tank, Nikolai, and Takeo had arrived and located Dr. Richtofen inside the facility, they became quickly surrounded by zombies. Because they could not remember anything about their past lives, they were forced to stick with Dr. Richtofen and attempt to stay alive. They held out as long as they could and when Dr. Richtofen deemed the time to be right, they began their trek back to Der Riese in an attempt to salvage what they could and aid their fight against the zombies. Once they arrived, they again fought for their lives, holding off zombies, to get what they needed and leave. They all jumped into the teleporter and a shot from the Wunderwaffe DG-2 overloaded the teleporter and sent them decades into the future. In the length of time that our heroes weren’t able to experience the world, it had become a much different place. Global affairs quickly dwindled from an Axis vs. Allies perspective to a war between the Eastern and Western powers. Once the United States had dropped the atomic bomb on Japan to end World War II, it became the new must-have weapon around the world. The two superpowers at the time, America and the Soviet Union, began their struggle for dominance across the globe and both Germany and its capital, Berlin, had been split up among the World War II victors. By the early 1960s, the Soviet Union began building a wall around their sector of Berlin and when the four time-travelers had arrived in the late 1960s, they found themselves at an abandoned theater in West Berlin; the same theater as Dr. Steiner’s former workplace, Kino der Toten. However, while there, they encountered strange creatures they’d never seen before. These creatures were the human experiments engineered by Dr. Maxis and Dr. Steiner, infused with NOVA6 gas and crawling around on all fours. After a long battle within Kino, Dr. Richtofen was able to recuperate and create a plan that would allow him to gain power in the Moon Pyramid Device and finally end Samantha’s reign of terror. Dr. Richtofen however, had his own plans of finding some method of reaching the M.P.D. to gain the power for himself. To carry out this plan, the four managed to somehow go back in time and arrive at somewhere rather peculiar. In at least the latter half of 1962, Dr. Gersh and his assistant, Dr. Yuri, began making a hovercraft to rival what the Americans and Canadians were producing. Additionally, the Ascension group had also been busy on Project Thunder, a weapon known as the Thundergun that shot enough air to kill someone, though changes still needed to be made to the power cells and range. Finally, they were also working a portable teleporter by official title of Project Mercury, though many just called it the Gersh Device. During the testing of this device, a miscalculation on Yuri’s part resulted in the Casimir Mechanism exploding, rendering it unusable. As punishment, Yuri was moved to Russian spacecraft development, blasting monkeys into space. With his rage, Samantha found her golden opportunity to fulfill her father's wishes of killing all the Group 935 scientists that remained within the Ascension Group. Through her ethereal ability to manipulate time and space, she retrieved Dr. Richtofen’s journal and placed it in Ascension for Yuri to find. All went to plan, and Yuri wanted to keep the information about Element 115 away from Gersh’s destructive hands, just as Richtofen had done with Maxis. All the while, Samantha began driving the scientist to insanity and eventually going so far as to torment him by placing her voice within his head and insisting that he take revenge on Gersh. Eventually, when his plan to take out his superior was complete, he approached Dr. Gersh and asked him to do the honors of activating the Gersh Device. When the portal was opened, Gersh was sucked into the vortex and joined Samantha in Aether. It was at this point that the undead rose and overcame Dr. Yuri, infecting the facility before Dr. Richtofen arrived. Before Dr. Richtofen entered the facility, he fully expected the station to be able to transport him directly to the Moon. He donned a cosmonaut suit from one of the facilities lockers and entered the station, though he quickly found it far too overrun to complete his objective. The team used one of the stations lander test utilities to escape the horde, subsequently pulling them into the center of the facility. While the team took a moment to prepare themselves for the coming wave of undead, it became apparent that while Gersh was in Aether, he had also connected himself to the facility itself and was able to communicate through the station’s electronics. He pleaded with the four of them to free him from the terrible place he was in but rebuilding the Casimir Mechanism, and once they had done so, Gersh’s soul was free from Samantha’s wrath in Aether. Around the same time as Ascension, a secret meeting was held between President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Fidel Castro, with Robert McNamara and Richard Nixon acting as President Kennedy’s political advisers during the talk. With materials housed below in the Pentagon’s laboratories, acquired from Group 935, it was clear to Samantha that the United States was going to use these materials to at least partially recreate what Group 935 had done. She got the undead to rise, and the fighting continued for a prolonged amount of time before it began to take its toll. In addition to the zombies, a new threat was faced within the pentagon; a zombified intruder from an unknown origin collecting any and all 935 technology the Americans had hoped to recreate. Using the intricate system of teleporters the Department of Defence saw fit to install, the Thief ran rampant and snatched up all the weapons he could get, returning them to Aether so they could never be used again. By the end of the conflict, the four politicians were able to fend off the undead and the United States government successfully hid the event from the public. It was early 2011, and Sarah Michelle Gellar, Robert Englund, Danny Trejo, and Michael Rooker were on their way to unravel the true origins of Element 115 with their director, George A. Romero. However, their boat crashed into a mysterious Siberian island during a terrible snowstorm and upon arrival, Romero encountered some interesting documents about Group 935 experiments that took place on the island. He had stumbled upon Dr. Richtofen’s Eagle’s Nest. Inspired, George Romero and his cast decided to work on location to produce a film, which began March 17th of that year. While the crew was filming the four characters slaying fake zombies, a real one came out of a window, but no one believed that it was real, actually thinking it was too fake. The Zombie throws a producer into the rocky wall and jumps at Romero, taking him into sea below. From the ocean depths, Romero emerged undead and powered with Vril energy resonating throughout his body. With their director turned, the four movie stars take on their roles and begin to slay the incoming real zombies while searching for a way to put an end to the nightmare they found themselves in. At that time, Tank, Takeo, Nikolai, and Dr. Richtofen arrived in Siberia via teleportation. While they were trapped within the test chamber of a teleporter, Edward Richtofen concludes that they were sent past their target date, they were too far into the future. Dempsey realizes that Richtofen knows where they are and begins to get suspicious. But they're distracted when they hear some strangers outside, and Dr. Richtofen asked them if they could help him retrieve some things. Little did he know, it was the four characters that shipwrecked on the same island. Dr. Richtofen knew exactly what he was looking for, and made everyone think it was to fix the teleporter. In reality, he needed a particular piece to advance his ambitions of ruling the world. Under his instructions, the four actors used the Vril energy inside of a weapon, the V-R11, to turn a Zombie back into a human and sacrifice him in return for the Vril Generator; one of the fabled golden rods of Agartha. The submarine created a green beam and transferred the rod from within to without, floating it down the lighthouse, waiting for the actors to retrieve it. Once the golden rod was given to Dr. Richtofen, he hid it in his pocket, keeping its purpose to himself and away from the suspicious Dempsey and others. Before repairing the teleporter and leaving, Dr. Richtofen gifted the actors with the Wunderwaffe DG-2, to help survive the best they could against the zombies, including George. Once the team teleported, they arrived in a mystical place, and only Dr. Richtofen understood the true meaning of their location. Once again, he was in Shangri-La, an entrance to the underground world of the Hollow Earth, home to Agartha. However, the area had changed greatly from how he remembered it. Rather than the abandoned burnt-out tunnels of old as he left it, the hidden city had undergone a massive shift in mining capabilities. Like Germany had done in the late 1930s, the Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam performed expeditions into the Himalayas, and while they were likely searching for something mysterious, what they found was something they never thought would happen. They had discovered what was left of Shangri-La and shortly after arrival, the allied countries found that the underground tunnels held massive amounts of Element 115, ripe for the harvest. Along with what the tunnels contained, there was also something very noticeable that wasn’t around: life. The entire complex had been abandoned and life no longer wandered these tunnels, thanks to Dr. Richtofen’s earlier genocide of the Vril-ya. With nothing standing in their way, the three countries began working and experimenting in the area, including things like rocket testing. However, given time, this hidden city would eventually prove to be far too dangerous for the Russians and Chinese. Also during the time that Dr. Richtofen was away, two explorers named Brock and Gary entered Shangri-La in search of the land of Agartha. Out of curiosity, Brock pressed an interesting button, and they were teleported back in time to a point during a solar eclipse. Upon their arrival in this new time, encountered by zombies, Gary was completely shaken and yet Brock seemed to have knowledge on the topic, likely due to his research into myths and legends (like Shangri-La). Later in time, when Richtofen et al. were fighting for their lives, the group saw four buttons near them and simultaneously pressed them, being launched years into the past. Shortly after each had been in the same past, they discovered that they weren’t alone. Dr. Richtofen heard Brock and Gary and decided it best to help them. As they went through the steps of trying to retrieve them from the tunnel system they were in, Brock noticed that the architecture was not what he had expected, stating that the temple was an “interpretation” and there were unfinished carvings. Noticing their presence, an unknown creature killed Gary while he was in the water. The group rectified the death and brought the explorer back to life, then proceeding to find the altar Dr. Richtofen had set up long ago. To Dr. Richtofen’s surprise, he found a massive meteor sitting at the very top of the temple and understood that needed it. After Dr. Richtofen located the shrink ray that Dr. Maxis was involved in, he managed to concentrate the Element 115 meteor into a small, Vril energy stone, fully knowing he could combine it with the Vril Generator and complete his master plan. When the explorers found this strange stone sitting on the altar, they attempted to move it, resetting all that was done. Brock and Gary were thrust into a paradox, where they constantly had to relive the events of that day. While the rest of the group failed to understand the time loop they had just created in freeing Gary and Brock, Dr. Richtofen urged them to leave the temple. Using the teleportation device housed within the temple, Dr. Richtofen once again escaped, this time with the rest of the crew. At a test site in Nevada, following the Black Ops and Spetsnaz fighting each other and the nuclear bomb test that was happening, a group of radiation scientists went in to investigate the remains. To their surprise, the nuclear test being performed in Nuketown was a bomb filled with Element 115, which was retrieved from Area 51 for usage. They discover the newly arisen soldiers and are subsequently attacked, and after sending a distress signal, they are also turned into Zombies. The CIA and CDC receive the distress signal while at Area 51 and go to investigate, but they mysteriously lose all communication with Hangar 18. With Richtofen’s master plan drawing to a close, the group sent themselves from Shangri-La to Area 51. However, it’d become apparent to them that the Americans had grown an intense interest in the programs Group 935 was involved with. Within the largest hanger, Hanger 18, sat a teleporter so similar to Group 935’s, one couldn’t tell the difference. At this moment, Samantha began to raise hell across Paradise Ranch, ravaging Area 51. Fighting as long as possible, the four of them stepped onto the teleporter and suddenly found themselves gasping for air. After they donned pressurized suits, the team realized they were in Griffin Station on the Moon. From there, Dr. Richtofen began the process of inserting himself into the M.P.D. to control the Aether and subsequently, the world. After activating the terminal, Dr. Richtofen encountered what became of Dr. Maxis. Dr. Maxis pleaded with Richtofen to end the madness before it was too late, but it all fell on deaf ears. Edward fused the Vril Generator and Focusing Stone to create the Vril Device, which he inserts into the M.P.D., preparing to switch souls with Samantha. Enraged at Richtofen, she attempts to warn him of the power within the pyramid. It was far greater than Edward could have ever imagined, and far more ancient. He could never possibly hope to control it. What hadn’t been understood was that as the Vril-ya had come to Earth many moons ago, they’d split into factions and went their separate ways. The group considered to be evil by many were the ones in control of the the pyramid on the Moon. When God cast Lucifer out of Heaven and the fallen angels made their way to Earth, he found himself inside the M.P.D. and his followers back on Earth, the Nephilim, became known as the Illuminati. Unaware of what was happening in space, a team of CIA and CDC agents discovered the absence of radiation scientists that went to investigate a nuclear testing facility, Nuketown in Nevada. Both teams, unknowing of each other’s objectives, sought after Nuketown to find it destroyed and littered with the rising dead of the Black Ops squad, Spetsnaz team, and radiation scientists. The CIA and CDC agents fought their way through hordes of Zombies, failing to recognize that in the back corner of where they were fighting, there was a small fallout shelter which held a young man by the name of Marlton Johnson. As a child, however, Marlton always felt he had a target on his back, and that showed up again. He was a younger, but very intellectual, electrical engineer and chemical scientist. Shortly before finding himself in the shelter, the organization he worked for had asked him to accompany a team of radiation scientists, but for an unknown reason. While in the shelter, he appeared to be unhappy about the nuclear detonation, as the resulting EMP seems to have destroyed his electronics. Meanwhile on Moon, Edward had come too far and worked too hard to be told how to act by a child. He swapped bodies with Samantha, acquiring her powers while imprisoning her soul in his old, frail form. Maxis acted hastily, knowing that Richtofen inside the pyramid was a very terrible event. He told Dempsey and the others that he wants to “minimize the damage” that Richtofen was capable of inflicting, with his plan for this being to be launch the missiles at Earth, decimating the entire human race, which he says is the “last chance to sever Edwards link with Earth” and save them from a life under Richtofen’s tyrannical rule. Tank Dempsey, Nikolai Belinski, Takeo Masaki, and Samantha Maxis watched from the lunar surface as three rockets crashed into the Earth and lava began seeping from within. Takeo Masaki had realized what just happened, vowing to “get revenge on all of Group 935,” just as Samantha vowed years ago. As decades passed on the ruins of Earth, some of survivors surfaced. Marlton Johnson found that the shelter he was in ran almost 1,000 miles North, to the Hanford Site in the United States. The Hanford Site, established in 1943, was a nuclear production site for the Manhattan Project, housing the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Upon arrival, he walked out of the shelter and noticed himself in a tunnel, immediately running straight for any exit, finding an abandoned Diner, but continuing on to the Town nearby. However, he also found something else entirely when he arrives; Abigail “Misty” Briarton. When she was younger, she lived on a farm, filled with a clothesline and all sorts of good memories. She was a six-time knife-fighting champion and had many piercings. She went through the teenage runaway days, perhaps as a result of her mother dying as she can’t remember her face any longer. While her mother died at an unknown time under unknown circumstances, her father was killed by the Zombies, which still enraged her to think about. Prior to this, however, a company named Broken Arrow had let go of an employee for unknown reasons, and barely able to remember his name, or what his past entailed, he then began to walk the Earth. He goes by Russman, and dabbled in Element 115 while working for an unknown organization at the Broken Arrow site, before he was let go for unknown reasons. But afterwards, the facility was burned down to remove any evidence of their implications regarding an outbreak. They were the Group 935 of the United States, dabbling in Element 115. When Misty and Marlton met for the first time, Zombies began to swarm them and they were forced to start a murderous rampage in an attempt to stay alive. Behind them, a bus had pulled up with an automated, artificial robot driver driving two men they’d never met before, Samuel J. Stuhlinger and Russman, but would soon start working with. Suddenly, as the four of them begin to maneuver between the locations of the Hanford Site, the bus’s navigation system malfunctioned and caused the bus to take a different route, which would endlessly loop around the entire Hanford Site, starting with the Consolidated Coach Corporation Bus Depot. Because Dr. Richtofen had accessed Aether via the MPD, he had gained the ability to speak to anyone anywhere, so when the crew was in the Bus Depot, they could all hear him speaking for the first time, and Samuel began hearing him inside his head. Richtofen wanted them to help him, but he wasn’t the only one. While crafting a small wind turbine inside the depot, Maxis’s distorted voice came over the P.A. system, demanding the crew to complete the device. Upon completion, they took the turbine, hopped onto the bus that Samuel and Russman originally arrived in, and made their way around the Hanford Site. Passing by a diner and a farm, they eventually made a stop at the power station to turned on the electrical grid. Once the electrical grid became activated, something strange started happening inside the main power core, where the crew witnessed an electrical being arise. Named “Him”, he would electrocute them until they put a stop to him, either by temporarily killing him via EMP or turning the power off so he had no energy to feed from. That moment was when the crew had a difficult decision to make on what to do next, for they had to either assist Maxis or Richtofen and help one of them further their goals. Disregarding who they follow, both deities need what’s known as the NavCard Reader, which is a table consisting of a card reader, radio, and a small meteorite of Element 115 meteorite. When attempting to put the NavCard they had found in the Bus Depot into the NavCard Reader, the reader refused to accept it and they were informed it was an incorrect NavCard. Dr. Richtofen told the crew to not worry about the NavCard at the moment, as it would only become of importance later down the line, but did mention that the Element 115 meteorite was of importance now. After the new crew successfully converted the pylon in Hanford to be an energy transmitter for either Richtofen or Maxis, Richtofen teleported Stuhlinger and company to a new location, with another tower that would need to be converted: Province 22, in Shanghai, China. Inside the tower, there was also a section reserved for the International Zombie Center, where not much is known, but they began to release reports that after the United States killed the leader of the Strike Defense Coalition and China, Tian Zhao, in 2025, he became infected with Element 115 and was turned into a zombie. As a confused and distraught Stuhlinger stood on the edge of the destroyed tower, looking down the dizzying heights, Dr. Richtofen tried telling him about preparing the next set of plans, which was to mend the Rift, which Stuhlinger has no clue about. Dr. Richtofen threatens that if Stuhlinger were to not comply, he’d expose his secret about The Flesh to the other three and Stuhlinger caves. Just at that moment, as zombies crept up on Stuhlinger, Russman dove in the way to kill some and was subsequently killed by a Jumping Jack. The remaining survivors - Samuel, Marlton, and Misty - momentarily escape Russman’s fate by hopping onto a working elevator, while Dr. Richtofen is trying to tell Samuel something that he can’t make out. After the three get off the elevator, they found themselves swarmed by the undead and Richtofen’s words became audible: “accept your fate, begin anew”. The three of them then met their demise, but suddenly, the entire crew, Russman included, were revived back to the spot that Richtofen originally teleported them, but having the memories of their deaths erased. As the crew moved along the debris of the massive tower, both Dr. Maxis and Dr. Richtofen began talking about their plans. Each deity told the crew to help them by standing on several chinese symbols across the tower to link them. When one of the survivors picked up a sniper rifle along the way, the deities made it clear that it would be valuable, but not how, and when the crew moved to a tower across from the one they were on, it became clear. They noticed two orbs in the mouths of two different dragon signs on the rooftops and to get ahold of them, they would have to shoot each orb out of the dragon's mouth with the sniper, where they floated to the original tower and settled under the paws of lion statues. The crew is also able to build another NavCard table and insert the card they have from Green Run, which it accepts this time around. From here, depending on who they helped in Hanford, they’d continue to do so, hoping their judgement was correct. With neither of the two deities communicating with the crew after energizing the radio tower in Shanghai, the four of them had no idea where to go, so Russman informed them on as much of his life as he could remember and the things he had learned, including that he was an operative from Broken Arrow and had to leave because of something they called “the incident”. Because of this, he had known about the Rift and laid out a plan that would take them from Shanghai past the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, Africa, and to the Rift, all while they fought against the undead and helped one another survive along the way. During travel, Stuhlinger informed them of the German voice in his head and when they decided to stop for the last night in Angola, Africa, less than a day’s travel from the Rift, Russman began criticizing him for the voices. Immediately, Marlton alluded back to Russman’s own problems and they stressed the importance of working together to survive. When they awoke, they finished the journey to the Rift, where they found to be an extremely deep crater with what appeared to be a red portal at the bottom, accompanied by a very large, abandoned diamond mining site near the edge of the Rift. As the group of survivors entered the mining site, they surveyed the area and followed a dirt tunnel, which led to the top of a barn. When they exited the barn, much to their surprise, they found themselves in a buried American western town that, little did they know, had actually come from the United States. The town had become intertwined with the rocks themselves but to a certain extent, the town was still intact, with several shops and buildings present but closed off, via debris or doors. However, the greatest shock came when they spotted a large, thin, male figure in a nearby jail cell. They found the cell key, unlocked the prisoner’s door, and when he seemed to be terrified, they gave him some alcohol from the desk nearby and he immediately ran out of his cell and knocked down debris in front of the jailhouse, allowing the crew to access more of the town. Later on, when given alcohol again, the giant crushed a fountain in front of a church, so it appeared that whenever he got alcohol in him, he felt the urge to destroy something. In addition to the booze, the crew also found bowls of candy within the candy shop. When given to the giant, he offered services such as attacking zombies, crafting nearby buildables when partially completed, and even locking the Mystery Box into place. That wasn’t the only peculiar thing the crew noticed about him, but also that the zombies ignored the giant and the giant them, unless prompted, so he wandered alone through the town. It seemed that the crew had found a new ally. During their trek through the town, the crew noticed familiar parts that belonged to the NavCard Reader tables in Hanford and Shanghai, including a NavCard itself, and began looking for a place to set it up. They eventually gain access to an old Victorian mansion and when they step foot inside, they were greeted by what appeared to be a ghost of its former inhabitant, Sarah Faraday. The crew shot the spectral down, thinking they’d gotten rid of her, but this was quite the opposite. As more and more appeared, the crew quickly escaped the mansion via the back of the house, and entered the garden maze. While traveling in the maze, they noticed a fountain very similar to one the giant had destroyed near the church a while back, so they used an explosive to destroy this fountain and found a swirling, green portal in the hole where the fountain had stood. They dove into it and found themselves back at the mining site where they dropped into the barn, but now there was a floor. They decided to set up the NavCard table here, and recalling how the reader in Shanghai took Hanford’s NavCard, they inserted Shanghai’s NavCard into the reader and the machine accepted it, so they continued back to the town to investigate further. Also upon entrance, they begin to hear the familiar voices of Maxis and Richtofen speaking to them and again, pleading for their help. Maxis addressed the group and told them that they must stop Richtofen at whatever costs. He mentions that his plan was the final step to healing the Earth and that this particular location was key because there was a foreign source of energy that was thriving and at its strongest at this location, and that energy was coming from Agartha. However, along with Maxis, Richtofen also greeted Samuel, and when Richtofen saw that Samuel wasn’t happy to hear from him, Richtofen attempted to appease Samuel by calling him a friend, and that the final plan must be set into motion or else Maxis would manipulate the crew through his lies. Like in Shanghai, they hoped their judgement was sound and continued helping whichever deity they were helping. With all the crystal balls taken care of, either through shattering them for Maxis or powering them up for Richtofen, they each urged the crew to find a floating lantern. The goal was to obtain and harness its energy, even through brute force, as its power was necessary to further their plans. As the crew began wandering through town, a ghostly, lit lantern began to float and only when explosives were sent its way could the crew retrieve the fallen lantern. During this, Richtofen suggested the lantern may have a poltergeist residing within, while Maxis described it as a vessel for a type of energy that is contained in all matter. It became clear that each deity required a particular kind of essence to fuel it. Richtofen mentioned that it needed the energy of departed souls to fuel it, since they leave residual energy when they go, so the crew traveled into the eerie mansion and collected the source of energy from the widow’s ghosts until the lantern was full. Maxis mentioned that the lantern needed the energy of undead souls to fuel it, so the crew began to slay zombies until the lantern was full of undead energy. Once the lanterns were full of either undead or departed energy, the group went back into the town and found a glowing depiction of a lantern in the Gunsmith store, where they placed the ghostly lantern. Suddenly, a Masonic Pigpen cipher appear on the wall in front of them. The cipher, which consisted of three rows for three different messages, was decoded and each row revealed the name of a different mine. It was then that Maxis and Richtofen commented, saying that those before the crew had failed their tasks, but left these messages behind for others to follow, with Richtofen adding that he felt Samuel was his favorite. The crew traveled throughout the hidden tunnels of the town, searching for the mines, and eventually came across the three specified mine signs, each bound with the energy of Agartha. Both deities mention that the energy could be released through brute, electrical force, so the crew punched the signs with their Galvaknuckles in the order specified by the cipher. Upon punching them, they noticed glowing auras surrounding the signs, so they continued to punch the signs, when suddenly a spectral wisp appeared. Once the switchboard had been activated for Maxis, or the crew escaped the maze for Richtofen, they each insisted that the crew visit the fountain in order to finalize their plan. Once the crew reached the fountain outside the church, targets displaying Western gunslingers began to show up across the map. There, they had to destroy 84 targets total - 23 in the windows of the mansion, 19 in the saloon, 20 outside the candy store, and 22 around the jail cell. Once all the targets were destroyed, each survivor was given permanent perks by the deity as a reward for setting up the tower in his favor. Regardless what side the crew chose to help, they were required to insert all the appropriate NavCards into their respective readers, and once accomplished, the crew wandered aimlessly until they came across a strange box in the back of the courthouse. That contraption had 12 lights that were lit either red for Maxis or blue for Richtofen, depending on who they helped, and once it was fully lit with the same color, the front of the mechanism opened up to reveal a large, red “push” button. When the crew pushed it, the entire Earth began to shake. When the crew ultimately decided to help Dr. Maxis take control and pass into Agartha, it somehow caused time and space to essentially rupture and allowed for history to be rewritten. Regardless of who Marlton, Stu, Misty, and Russman had chosen to help, though, it all amounted to nothing. There were much larger forces at play than anything in the control of those four survivors. The Earth that Dr. Ludvig Maxis had blown up and subsequently guided the survivors through was merely one of many, many Earths, across many different realities. The Universe was not just the singular Earth and reality, but actually consisted of infinitely more realities. In one of these realities, Group 935 was not started by Dr. Maxis on the eve of World War II in order to improve the condition, but by an entirely unknown person right before World War I, in order to make weaponry. Instead, Dr. Maxis was an educator at Germany's Heidelberg University and one of his students was a young man named Edward Richtofen. He showed intellect and maturity well beyond his years, but when his parents died, it affected him deeply. Dr. Maxis attempted to be a father figure to him, but with Edward being so troubled, he opted to join Group 935. It is unknown when Dr. Maxis joined Group 935, but by January 5th, 1915, he had begun work creating a prototype of an upgraded Mauser C96. It was named the M1916CXS, and he planned on releasing it to soldiers across the battlefield the following year. By September, 1917, however, all of he and Edward's research had payed off and at an unknown Excavation Site in Europe, they discovered a new periodic element: Element 115, which they name Divinium. Not long after, however, the prolonged exposure to Element 115 had caused changes to appear in Dr. Maxis, and Dr. Richtofen began to notice. While Dr. Richtofen agreed that the potential benefits of this research outweighed any associated risks, it was only hesitantly, as he feared for what would come of his old friend. Group 935 continued to work in order to achieve these potential benefits, which included strange lights and one-thousand-foot-tall giant robots, as to achieve the Wonder Weapon program any military might could possibly want. Shortly before October 6th, 1917, the Emperor of Japan, Taishō, recognized a Captain in the Imperial Japanese Army for his leadership and past victories, including the Battle of Mukden in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The warrior's name was Takeo Masaki, who was ordered to secure any of Germany’s new mechanized weapons for the benefit of Japan. By the middle of the same month, the United States stock market was dropping quickly and Wall Street was in a panic. The United States government wanted to end the war as quickly as possible, so they attempted to gain an edge by sending air reconnaissance teams into Northern France, becoming aware of prototype advanced weaponry. They began training a special operations Marine, Tank Dempsey, to prepare him for what was happening. Before reaching Bar-le-Duc, he first fought in the Battle at Belleau Wood, near Paris, France, in 1918, even earning the Marines the nickname Devil Dogs. As for the Russians, they sent the exiled Nikolai Belinski on a military journey from the motherland to see what was happening in Northern France, where the French treated him very nicely, offering food, shelter, and other worldly comforts, such as the company of a woman now and again. By April of 1918, however, the United States had intercepted communications that revealed Russia and Japan also knew Germany was making odd war plans. As they all made their way to Northern France, they had no idea what they’d find behind the rumors they'd been hearing. It was at this time that Group 935 caught their lucky break. Ever since they first discovered Element 115, they searched elsewhere and set up more Excavation Sites. However, after performing a survey of an area inside Bar-le-Duc, Northern France, they found their largest single source of Element 115. They established it as Excavation Site Number 64 and began setting up and installing the Element 115 excavation generators in order to extract the Divinium from the site. Once they found a valuable source of information in the journal of one Pablo Marinus, the Germans were well on their way to fully realizing the potential benefits that Dr. Maxis had discussed, propelling their insatiable desire for yet more devastating weaponry. However, as they performed their work, they found that they had created localized energy fields that acted like portals, making random objects appear for seemingly no reason. Dr. Maxis hypothesized that Element 115 was disrupting the space-time continuum itself, bringing these objects through time and space. Though Dr. Maxis noted his theory was outlandish, he believed that the key to knowing for certain was located at the Pack-a-Punch machine, though he only knew it as the broken rune stones atop a mound. When he channeled Divinium towards the stones, he noticed that they brought forth weapons from different eras, even the future. He would further study these forces to advance the growing Wonder Weapon program, and even the weapon of his own creation, the M1916CXS, was included in this. During all of this, however, the changes in Dr. Maxis that Edward had originally noticed became much more apparent. Dr. Maxis began hearing the voice of a young girl named Samantha, or something claiming to be her, who asserted she was his daughter and was trapped in the mythical realm known as Agartha. At first, Dr. Maxis refuted such claims, as he knew he had no child, but the voice intrigued him so continued his research. However, this research was slightly different. From reading ancient texts, he learned of the Elemental stones of fire, wind, ice, and lightning, as well as the artifact that was instrumental to harnessing these energies, known as the Amplification Rod. However, when neither the rod, nor the stones could be recovered from any of their sites, he instructed Dr. Richtofen to create replicas. In the meantime, however, he was able to reflect, and expressed that the Ancients' knowledge was humbling. While he previously thought he understood the scientific world, he began second guessing himself and what he thought to be the true nature of the universe itself, including the very possibility of a higher power. However, the true secrets of the site, and potentially the answers to some of the mysteries, began showing themselves just underneath the mound. There, the men who set up and installed the 115 generators claimed to have seen ancient figures emerge, and Dr. Maxis would have dismissed their stories had the men not ended up dead or missing shortly thereafter. Even with this, Group 935 ventured into the mound and found a main chamber they weren’t able to access. As much as they attempted to open it through brute force, it wasn’t useful and only left the men tired and frustrated. When a gramophone was brought down to relieve tension, the workers played music by a group known as La Source Noire, which translated to Black Source. Upon its activation, it surprisingly caused the main chamber to open, so Dr. Maxis ordered for excavation to continue. It was then that a fatal mistake occurred, as the excavation workers opened a chamber in a cave that they were mining. Due to the Element 115 dispersed throughout the site, it caused the dead underneath to turn into zombies and escape through the opened chamber. Dr. Richtofen realized he had very little time and needed to save his friend and colleague form the illness he had succumbed to, so he performed surgery to preserve what was left of Maxis - his brain. As Dr. Richtofen had finished the lobotomy, he found himself in a room with the Japanese, American, and Russian soldiers, who had all arrived separately at the site in the middle of the zombie outbreak. Years later, in various United States metropoles, including Chicago and Morg City, a mob boss named Salvatore DeLuca created a gang that dealt with alcohol distribution, prostitution, and gambling. To do his dirty work, he hired Billy Handsome, a man who had developed mental issues at a young age and became very violent due to absent parents, murdering over one hundred people while in the gang. However, DeLuca’s most prominent hire was the man who worked directly beneath him, named Albert Arlington, or Al as most called him. Nicknamed “The Weasel”, he was a con man through and through, reportedly being able to “con people out of their souls”. Another mobster during the era was a gambling man named Michael “Finn” O’Leary. Finn had fallen head over heels for an actress named Angelina Bow, but when he realized he needed to lavish her to keep her, he decided to join the gang. As time went on, though, things started getting dangerous. Finn began committing more fraudulent acts for Angelina in the name of love and she testified against him in court, saying it was just to get away from him. Al and Billy were caught trying to pull a large heist, followed by Sal after being linked, and by the beginning of the 1930s, all four of them were sitting in prison on Alcatraz Island for crimes they had committed. Al had always been passionate about writing and drawing. Before entering Sal’s gang, he became injured and while in the hospital, he spent his time drawing comic books and sending them to a man only known as The Editor. Upon receiving Al’s art, The Editor only defaced it, but it didn’t stop Al from continuing. While at Alcatraz, Al kept a journal and eventually devised a plan to escape The Rock with the co-conspirators. He told the others he had created a makeshift plane that they’d take to the sky with from the roof, and being the con man that he was, the others believed him. However, during the implementation of the plan, the co-conspirators found out that no such plane existed and lured Al to the rooftops. It was right then that the three of them, Sal, Finn, and Billy, killed Albert Arlington with improvised weapons and let him die on the cold concrete roof. The date of this brutal murder was New Year’s Eve, 1933, and by January 19, 1934, the murderers were executed via the electric chair. Once they had passed on, all four mobsters entered into a Hellish purgatory with one another, forced to unknowingly relive their demise over and over until something changed and they broke the cycle. In one of the purgatory loops, however, the Weasel lured Stanley Ferguson, a night guard who patrolled the prison at the time the mobsters were still alive, into his cell and killed him. Ferguson inched out of the cell as a zombie and when the mobsters thought they’d finally killed him and were about to attempt their escape from Alcatraz, all hell broke loose in the prison, where Satanic artifacts appeared and zombies killed each of the mobsters. It is unknown why the killing of Stanley Ferguson brought about the Satanic nature of the prison, but the owner of these artifacts became clear. What the prisoners hadn’t known in their previous purgatory loops was that as the prison Warden had become thirsty for more power, he had made deals with Lucifer. If he performed satanic rituals, he was rewarded with power and control. At the hands of the Devil plucking these objects from their respective time, it allowed for the Warden to implement machines that dispersed perks, which were special abilities bottled up in a beverage and activated upon ingestion. He used this as a means to exercise his power, seeing as when the inmates were given these, it allowed them to better perform their duties and be more useful to the Warden. As the four mobsters began their next purgatory loop, they earned something for killing Stanley Ferguson. For an unknown reason, the Devil decided that that event had earned them the understanding that they weren’t attempting the escape for the first time like they continuously thought they were. They saw their bodies as lifeless shells lying on the ground, unmarked from their deaths at the hands of zombies, and realized that they were actually spirits in the Afterlife, able to see Alcatraz as it was past their death date and in the “present” 1934. They then inserted themselves into each of their own bodies, thus reviving themselves. One zombie in particular had extra significance, bearing an awfully close resemblance to Stanley Ferguson, the night guard that Al had killed, as if the Devil brought him back to simply torment those that killed him. As in their previous purgatory loops, the mobsters began their original plan of collecting plane parts. However, during this, they discovered something else that the Devil awarded them: the ability to re-enter the Afterlife. If they were to die while in their revived bodies, the Devil allowed them only one re-do, sending them back into the Afterlife until they’d find their bodies and again resurrect themselves. While building the plane wasn’t actually going to happen in real life and was only planned in their purgatory loops, the mobsters managed to complete it and as they soared off into the night sky, they were under the impression that their escape had succeeded. However, when a storm hit, the mobsters crashed onto the unfinished Golden Gate Bridge and encountered more zombies and several incarnations of Brutus. Their only option upon reaching the bridge was to die, but the manner in which that happened was entirely up to the mobsters, having to choose between being voluntarily executed via electric chairs set up on the bridge or dying through defeat to zombies. Regardless of how they lost their life, the four of them had to then repeat their actions as they’d been doing for so long, due to the very nature of purgatory. However, as with the previous time they began in Afterlife, they were shown their lifeless corpses and were allowed to revive themselves. Getting deja vu, they knew they needed to try again. After three more failed attempts, they again revived themselves and ventured through the prison to collect plane parts. As part of this process, they were required to punch in numbers at the stairwell to unlock, but this time around, they did something different. They entered into the Afterlife and punched in their inmate numbers (101, 386, 872, and 481, with 386 being Sal and 481 being Finn). Upon entry, Brutus asked the mobsters if they wanted to know the truth behind their deaths. The prison went black and white as Stanley Ferguson narrated the events that fell before the mobsters, where he started from their induction into Alcatraz and guided them to the rooftops to show the killing of Al and the conspirators. While the mobsters had previously understood that something happened to them, it was at this point they realized they were dead, and Finn, Billy, and Sal wanted revenge against Arlington. Afraid, Al jumped into Afterlife via electrical box and hopped onto the plane to escape, which didn’t appear to the regular human eye. The others did the same and they all took off back to the Golden Gate Bridge. Still in Afterlife, they ran to the electric chairs to see their bodies sitting on them. They entered their bodies. There, the zombies and Brutus appeared, but did not seem to attack Al. The other three claimed that Al was behind all of it and began to attack him. If they killed Al, the cycle would continue, forever looping their disparaging demise. If Al killed his murderers, however, the cycle would become broken.

I just logged on, which was roughly 5 minutes after an update, and the problem is still persisting. Just thought I'd let you know :) Also, on a separate thread, I'm having a font issue (I want to note that this was also pre-update). One small section isn't Times New Roman and when I select that section and anything else and select Times New Roman, it goes to the default font and I can't change it.

The first thing I will do in the game, and only thing for a long time, is search through the new terminal. I'll let everyone else do the rest :p

I wish I was able to get some of this! Maybe I'll come down to Australia to see you and snag me some ;)