Análise Comparativa: Palestina e Curdistão

A TRAIL OF SHAME

The Nazis have not been gone long, and the Reich has not admitted how many escaped. One of those is a former Ahnenerbe archaeologist. During the disorder following Hitler’s assassination, many Nazis used a program known as Odessa to make their way to South America. The Reich was unable to stop many of them but kept tabs on them where possible. This archaeologist was one of the first to go to Tibet in the late 1930s where he and his team discovered something of great impor-tance. It is believed that this discovery led indirectly to Germany finding Kvasir.

Today, Vormund wants to find out all they can about the Vrill. They do not believe Blutkreuz is sharing everything with them, and they’re right. But Vormund holds most of the files related to missing Nazis since the organisa-tion was formed from the ruins of Gestapo Secorganisa-tion E.

Weishaupt himself directly orders the players to make their way to Brazil where the archaeologist was headed.

They must enter the slums of Rio, find their contact, and avoid the Allies. Finding the archaeologist will not be easy. Complicating things, the slums of Rio are home to an SSU supported people’s movement aiming to overthrow the city government and become a commu-nist micro-state. You’ve been dropped in the middle of a roiling revolution and have to pluck a despicable Nazi out the resulting mess.

I’ve heard a lot of things about The Wolf, but the one that comes up most is the most outrageous.

It’s said he’s looking for the Holy Grail. Yeah, the actual cup of Christ.

Natalya figured it was horse pucky but, after our last adventure, I’m not so sure. There’s a lot more going on than ASOCOM is willing to admit. The Vrill, ancient artefacts, and things I can’t even begin to tell you about. If The Wolf is in the south of France, look for him in a village called Rennes Le Chateau. I probably didn’t spell that right. Never was as good with languages as you were.

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HIGHLANDER

Your team has been assigned by Blutkreuz to penetrate Tantallon Castle in Scotland. The castle lies on a promon-tory over the sea. Three sides are sheer cliffs falling into the pounding surf below. You’re going to airdrop from an experimental stealth craft and come in on gliders. You have to hit the castle hard and fast. There’s not going to be any time to waste. Once you have gained access, you must find a Blutkreuz agent who is being held there. This is a rescue operation. Blutkreuz wants the woman back. The Allies have fortified the old castle, and it’s going to be very tough to get in and out intact. Your exfiltration is by helicopter then on to a submarine waiting off the coast.

Because Scotland is still in Allied hands, air support will not be available. If you are captured, it’s unlikely a rescue will be mounted.

THE BATTLE OF LONDON

This scenario takes place during the Battle of London. You are a small team assigned with finding an English turncoat who has assisted the Axis during the taking of London.

You must extract him from behind enemy lines. The sec-tion of London, Camden Town, is a rough place, and the partisans there are armed. The turncoat was supposed to get to Axis lines yesterday, but failed to show. You’ve been given an experimental urban walker for this mission.

The agent’s last message indicated he was in Camden Town. What he didn’t mention was that he is leading the team into a trap. It turns out the turncoat is a triple agent, and the Allies really want their hands on the new walker.

London is falling, and they’re desperate to prevent the rest of England’s cities from following. You’re walking right into an ambush set by Red Devil commandos. Before this mission is over, you’ll have to shoot your way out of Camden Town and protect the walker. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking as Axis air power is about to bomb Camden back to the Stone Age.

THROUGH THE SCOPE

In a nod to the legendary sniper war that took place in Stalingrad, your team of elite snipers has been sent to kill the top marksman Jnetzi in the ruins of Zverograd. You’ll have to use all your wits to find him. He’s got a kill ratio unparalleled on any front.

It’s a game of cat and mouse and, if you aren’t quick and clever, you might find out you’re the mouse. One more thing. That sniper? He’s just a kid, all of 13 years old. Can you kill a kid? War is hell, but this is something else.

THE LONGBOAT

Iceland is something of a forgotten front. The winters are inhospitable and the lines static. Most of you stationed there don’t even know what you’re fighting for. Who would want this godforsaken frozen hell? You were just rotated out of the trenches. You’re cold, you have trench foot, and you need rest. Last night, an SSU charge nearly overran your position.

As soon as you’re about to bed down, your Oberleutnant assigns you to a mission behind SSU lines. What’s more, an archaeologist from Blutkreuz is going to accompany

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you. He isn’t much by the look of him, something like a clerk. He’s liable to get you all killed. Bad enough you have to babysit him, but your mission sounds ridiculous.

A communication intercepted from SMERSH indicates the Soviets have come across a Viking longship almost completely preserved in thick ice. The SSU is already digging it out. You have to get there first and secure the ship. Then, the archaeologist will tell you what to do next.

He won’t tell you now. That’s need to know information.

Right. Sure. This is a swell plan. Now, you have to hump it across the ice at night, get through enemy lines, and find a damn boat that hasn’t been seaworthy for 1000 years? You sometimes wonder what idiots are in charge of this war.

RENNES-LE-CHÂTEAU

A small town in France and home to a local legend. In the nineteenth century, Father Bérenger Saunière was renovat-ing the local church when he stumbled upon somethrenovat-ing extraordinary. No one recorded what it was he found, but he and the church suddenly came into a great deal of money. The church was restored and expanded and it has been a place of mystery ever since a deathbed confession suggested that something terrible was behind his wealth.

It’s the Second Battle of France, and the country is in chaos. Your Blutkreuz Korps Kommando squad is sup-posed to enter the area of the church, then secure and hold it. Reinforcements will come, but the Allies are preparing to blow up the entire church. Why?

In the sixth century, Visigoths supposedly buried treasure in the area, but a bit of gold, or even a lot, isn’t worth a risky mission like this. Something else is going on.

Blutkreuz believes the priest possessed documents which led to the discovery of a series of underground caves used by the Visigoths. The “treasure” they hid was not gold, but something to do with VK. Is there a VK deposit there?

You’ve heard a rogue Axis commander named “The Wolf ” is active in the area, looking for nothing less than the Ark of the Covenant. Does that somehow relate? Blutkreuz isn’t sure. You’ll need to hold the church and the town for a day. Rangers are on their way to stop you from doing this. Stalingrad had better odds than this.

THE SSU

Formed at the end of 1945 as an alliance between Communist China and the U.S.S.R., the SSU controls more territory, and can field more troops, than any other bloc. The Red Tide is moving quickly in 1947, pushing back against Axis aggression and Allied betrayal.

No other bloc has taken such punishing losses as the SSU.

The fronts in Russia and China have been wars of attri-tion, meat grinders into which Stalin and Mao have sent men, wave after wave, to die. Russia herself was desecrated by the Nazis and now by the Axis. China was ravaged by the Japanese at the start of the war in Asia. The SSU is roused to anger, and they’re now in a position to exact revenge on the world.

For the SSU, the war has been about defending home.

They have been at war longer than the other blocs and have suffered the worst incursions. In 1947, they attempt to retake lost ground, while expanding in other areas. The SSU is also united by an ideal. The communist revolutions of Russia and China promised a new world, one in which the shackles of capitalist greed were thrown off and men could make their way through their own labour.

This ideological bond cannot be underestimated. The Axis is an alliance of convenience, and the Allies are an alliance falling apart. Only the SSU remains dedicated to a single vision for tomorrow. Men and women alike fight and die for this ideal. While America has its liberty, and England its stiff upper lip, Russia and China have hordes of troops who fight and die for the homeland.

Such ideals have proved as decisive and world changing as the war itself. In South America, Marxist revolutions have spread like wildfire, followed by troops from the SSU to bolster these new regimes. Suddenly, America finds the oceans no longer protect her from the Red Menace so derided in U.S. newsreels. Brazil and Argentina alone remain out of SSU hands. The front has come to America, and the SSU will strike at Germany next.

The Sino-Soviet Union is vast, full of natural resources, and more tenacious than any other bloc on Earth. Only the SSU could have weathered such horrors as Stalingrad and Nanjing. While The Axis offensive is currently steamrolling the Allies, it has largely halted against the wall of the Russian “General,” winter. Now, even some in the Allied bloc believe that the SSU is the only hope the world has of escaping being enwrapped in the Knight’s Cross. These same folk know that such a victory would only mean trading one flag for another. The SSU is pre-pared to make this fear come true.

OPERATIONS

Russia is not the focus of this volume, since the ETO is the main area of play, to date, in Dust. China and her fronts will be covered in a later supplement. Suffice it to say, the SSU are operating in Mainland China, Southeast Asia, and even making incursions toward Siberia.

Russia herself is fighting on all fronts. While Mao is bogged down fighting the Japanese, the Russians have been better able to resist the invasions they’ve suffered.

Retaking the city of Kharkov after seven separate battles, Russia now has an important source of oil back in its hands. With fuel comes mobility, and the SSU has used that mobility to spread across the globe.

As mentioned, the SSU has bolstered—some say ignited—communist revolutions throughout South America. They have pushed the Germans out of Kharkov, but halted immediately after. It appears the SSU is considering its options—a very deadly, hibernating bear that wakes as winter breaks. They could easily reopen the German front in the East (their West) and push into Europe itself. Everyone is waiting to see what the SSU does next.

A Viking longship sounds like something counter-intel would cook up to throw ASOCOM off, but it’s not. Natalya saw one buried in ice deep into the North Arctic. It had VK aboard it, Edward. This idea that the Germans were the first to discover VK? That’s just B.S. I can personally vouch for at least three other ancient cultures being aware of the crystal and its properties. The Vrill must have been here a long time ago. Whatever they got up to, we aren’t the first culture to look into it.

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In Africa, the SSU has already taken Madagascar and has joined the battle for the Middle East. While China fights against the Japanese on Chinese soil, Russia is taking on the Americans on their own land. In the dense Everglades of Florida, Soviet troops learn the ways of jungle warfare. In Alaska, they prove their acclimatization to harsh Russian winters makes them outperform the Allies in the cold. Still, they are unable to push back the Marines stationed in that northern clime…for now.

Zverograd continues to plague an otherwise robust 1947 for the SSU. Whatever secret the Russians hide under the city is intact—neither the Allies nor the Axis have discovered it for themselves. But Russia is herself an invaded nation, and Stalin will not cease pouring troops into the Battle of Zverograd. The SSU has lost enough territory in this war. They will lose no further.

For some significant SSU forces and their locations, see the table below.

ORGANISATIONS

SMERSH

The SSU’s intelligence apparatus is a vast, and often bureaucratic, machine. State security is centralized in SMERSH, which has superseded all previous intelligence groups in the SSU. Those intelligence organisations deemed still viable were subsumed into SMERSH. This has necessarily created an apparatus that is Byzantine in complexity and foreign to outsiders. Indeed, the very com-plexity and protocols inherent in SMERSH are a kind of protection against infiltrators and spies. SMERSH, AKA

“Death to Spies,” is itself proof against espionage by virtue of the Russian State’s predilection for bureaucracy. Just try navigating the route a particular piece of intel takes from field agent to analysis—you’ll be lost.

Yet it works for the SSU. SMERSH is an extremely effec-tive, if sometimes heavy-handed, intelligence gathering operation. SMERSH agents have helped start revolutions in South America, unlocked secrets of Vrill technology, and broken Allied codes in preparation for Operation Red Sun (the invasion of Alaska).

When most Americans hear SSU, Russia comes to mind. Don’t ignore the Red Chinese threat, though. I saw them in their infancy back in Shanghai. They’re as fervent as the Russkies about communism and there are a whole lot of them. Chiang Kai Shek and his nationalists aren’t as clever as Mao, and ASOCOM isn’t spending near the amount of resources on them.

The Chinese have seen various foreign powers meddle in their affairs since the Opium Wars, Edward. They aren’t going to stop even if Russia somehow falls. Their culture is among the oldest on the planet. They were the masters of their corner of the world for a long time. They aim to reclaim that role. Their intelligence network isn’t as good as ASOCOM, but they learn fast. You get yourself face to face with an attractive dragon lady, you be sure to suspect she’s a femme fatale. I know of at least one besotted British flyer that spilled the beans on an op to his darling

“taxi dancer.” Wound up with his throat cut in an alley near the Bund.

What I’m saying is, don’t underestimate them.

The Red Army depends on SMERSH to inform its com-manders. Secrets are kept by those at the highest levels under the classification of Extreme State Security (ESS).

This is equivalent to Above Top Secret in ASOCOM. A further level of classification is rumoured to exist solely for the likes of Stalin and General of Intelligence Rasputin.

While SMERSH is an ordered, if somewhat Kafkaesque, organisation, it also possesses an ultimate chief in the form of General Rasputin. It is wise to remember that Rasputin came not from the Bolshevik Revolution but from the Romanov Dynasty it overthrew. In many respects, Rasputin is the last person who should be in charge of state security, and yet he is. How this came to be is a closely guarded secret, possibly known only to Rasputin and Stalin himself. Sometime after Rasputin’s “assassina-tion,” he reappeared in the Kremlin and somehow gained a toehold in the government to come.

SMERSH has Rasputin’s fingerprints all over it. There are those in the apparatus who are loyal to the man first and the state second. Stalin is not unaware of this but, for now, Rasputin holds enough power that Stalin is leery of making any open moves against him. Rasputin, ever the survivor and manipulator, no doubt knows that when the war ends, he will be living on borrowed time.

DIRECTORATE OF PSYCHOENERGETICS Created by Rasputin as a directorate under SMERSH, the Directorate of Psychoenergetics is devoted to the study of psychic and paranormal phenomena. In this way, it bears similarity to Blutkreuz, but has only a fraction of the Vrill technology at its disposal. Separate directorates research and fund the weaponisation of Vrill technology itself. The Directory of Psychoenergetics uses VK and Vrill technol-ogy only for psychic research.

Men and women selected for the directorate are drawn from the finest ranks of SMERSH. Psychics are trained according to a program developed by Rasputin himself.

They are indoctrinated into the mysteries of Theosophy—a pseudo-religion popular in the nineteenth century (see Madame Blavatsky on p. 174). The NKVD (see below) is uncomfortable with this, as they believe it belies the com-munist indoctrination to which they are dedicated.

Significant SSU Forces

Name Estimated Current Location

9^th Guards Heavy Tank Division Zverograd

3^rd Special Duty Division, SMERSH Zverograd

3^rd Guard Assault Aviation Zverograd

Division, 2^nd SSU Air Fleet Zverograd

13^th Red Banner Army Zverograd

1^st Red Guards Motor Rifle Division Zverograd

10^th SSU Rifle Division Zverograd

2^nd SSU Air Fleet Zverograd

666^th Separate Special Purpose Brigade Zverograd/Alaska/North Africa

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Yet the directorate has great autonomy, at least for now.

Rasputin has focused the organisation on exploiting latent psychic ability. The Directorate discovered certain locations around the globe that seem to amplify some of these abilities. They are investigating how and why these locations have these effects.

The Directorate’s most successful research comes in the form of remote viewing, or clairvoyance. SSU psychics are able to predict—with a statistically significant amount of accuracy—enemy troop movements. (Take note that sta-tistically significant does not mean often.) Still, some very real operations have been exposed by Russian psychics which otherwise would have remained secret. Operation Red Sun may have benefited from the psychic probing of the minds of captured spies.

NKVD (PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF

NKVD (PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF