Trench Crusade (Tabletop Game)

The board is set and the pieces are moving. The Great War is beginning anew.

"Sing praise unto the Lord, my brothers and sisters! Exalt the numbness and the falling away of flesh He deems fit as He frees us of our sin. Cherish the pocks and grooves His divine fingers shape, for in thy carvings does He show the path to purgation. Pray that this affliction most sacred shall cleave unto thee until thy soul is fit for heaven. Suffering is the Lord’s most sage council – indeed, did He not reserve it most fulsomely for His only son? Lo, for blessed are we that should follow in His footsteps, with holy crooked toes and lids unable to shield our eyes from the truth of His love."

— Prophet Solon, Proclamations of His Gift

Trench Crusade is a work-in-progress grimdark skirmish wargame from Mordheim designer Tuomas Pirinen and Diablo IV artist Mike Franchina, set in a horrifying alternate timeline where the Church and The Legions of Hell have been at war for centuries.

During the First Crusade, the armies of the Church captured the Holy City of Jerusalem. Beneath the holiest of temples, the Knights Templar discovered secret vaults and an ancient demonic artifact within them. The Templars fell to their knees, blinded by greed and with weakness in their hearts. They had found a new lord.

Seeing the unholy wisdom of which the artifact spoke, they began trafficking with devils and committing all manner of unspeakable rites. This was the First Heresy.

The armies of the Church retreated and Jerusalem became a depraved pit where Hell and our mortal plane now bled into one. The Church has waged its crusade to take back the Holy City for eight centuries. Now, in the Year of Our Lord 1914, the landscape has been utterly devastated, crisscrossed with thousands of miles of mud, trenches, and craters. The crusade is now waged with armies wielding terrifying weaponry, and both sides conjure up supernatural beings of such immense power they are nigh unstoppable. Even with such incalculable might, the forces of Heaven and Hell are at a stalemate. This is not just a fight for survival, but a cataclysmic struggle that will decide the very fate of humanity's soul.

This is the Trench Crusade.

A Kickstarter for the full game launched on October 29, 2024, and was funded in just over 20 minutes, reaching over 3 million $USD on November 11. The campaign can be found here. The game itself is currently in a playtest beta and is built to depict small-scale skirmishes between "Warbands" of 10-30 soldiers in the No Man's Land of the Great War. In March 2026, the expansion "Carcass Front" was announced, with its release scheduled for July of the same year. The expansion adds new war scenes and places special focus on the Heretics Navy and the Procession of the Sacred Affliction, introducing new specific units and lore centered around the Leviathan.

The currently available factions are:

Principality of New Antioch: The brave men and women of the fortress-city of New Antioch, the main bulwark of the Faithful against the Unholy.
The Iron Sultanate: The alchemists, assassins, and soldiers of the Sultanate of Rûm, whose domain is protected by the Iron Wall of Dhu al-Qarnayn.
Trench Pilgrims: Disorganized groups of Christian pilgrims led by alleged prophets of the Lord or visions from the almighty, mostly comprised of civilian zealots.
Cult of the Black Grail: The twisted reanimated monsters born from Beelzebub's Black Grail plague, and the mortal cultists who gave in to the Fly Lord's fetid embrace.
Heretic Legions: The armies of the nations consumed by the Hell Gate, fielding both damned men and bestial monsters blessed with the darkest of Hell's boons.
Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent: The Demons of Hell, who want nothing more than to ravage and despoil the world. Its numberless legions are led by the seven most powerful Arch-devils, each embodying one of the Seven Deadly Sins and directing the Godless Hordes' neverending war against all Creation.

"Let the trumpets sound and let the banners unfurl, for it is in the violence of Tropes that salvation is gained:

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A-C

Acquired Poison Immunity: In their youth, Sultanate Assassins are raised on a diet of poisonous plants and animals that slowly imbue their blood with potent toxins. As they grow up, their very blood becomes an effective poison in and of itself.
Action Girl:
- The Stigmatic Nuns speak for themselves. The official models provide one who's half-naked and covered in blood, and one who's wearing much more sensible armour.
- One of the Paladins currently raising Hell in Hell itself is prominently female, and is one of the most feared Paladins amongst the demons.
- The House of Wisdom, where the Iron Sultanate trains its Alchemists, is noted to accept both male and female applicants.
- The flavour text for the Kingdom of Alba Assault Detachment references that while they're mostly men, a few fierce women tag along.
- Hauptmann Frederica von Gotz, full stop. As a hauptmann of the Free State of Prussia's 6th Gardekorps, one of her roles in combat is to run up to Heretic tanks (some of which fire ammo that screams the Lord's Words of Creation in reverse, horrifically and agonizingly UNMAKING its unfortunate targets) and hit them with her BFS. Not only has she been doing this for years, she refuses to take a command position at the rear, which she's amply earned, preferring to remain fighting the forces of Hell on the frontlines.
All Your Base Are Belong to Us:
- The Heretics invaded Ireland in 1807 after a series of events carefully prepared by the Heretic Lord of the Sea, Zacchur, who managed to make a pact with the Cult of the Moon of the Path of the Beast. The cult caused famine and disorder on the island so that the Irish were unprepared for the heretics' maritime assault. After establishing a foothold on the coast, the heretics opened a portal to Hell by sacrificing thousands of captives, allowing the forces of the Court to invade the island. The High King of Eire was killed in battle and most of the coastal regions of the island were overrun. The newly crowned Irish king ordered the loyalist forces to move into the interior, ceding most of the island to the enemy. For the next eighty-three years much of Eire was controlled by the heretic forces, to the extent that the rest of the Faithful realms wrote the island off as lost, save for the French and the Duke of New Antioch, who sent his personal bodyguard to aid the Irish. This state of affairs lasted until the young queen Brigid took the throne and enacted a series of audacious plans. She lifted the ban on the Fianna, the ancient hunter-warriors, and requested the help of the Paladin Anséis to close the hell portal. The Fianna executed a successful suicide attack on Zacchus's flagship, sinking it and killing him, while Anséis sealed the portal at the cost of one of his eyes.
- Previously, the Heretic fleet was able to conquer Gibraltar and Rijeka in Europe, as well as all of Egypt's ports, making them its offshore bases of operations. This means that the Faithful must always be on the lookout for a naval assault.
- Currently, Grand Duke Eligos is leading an assault on Italian soil with an army of mechanical monstrosities. Since they are not alive, they do not require many supplies, so their advance has been exceptionally rapid. Cardinal Domenico Alidosi, one of the 12 cardinals dedicated to the war against the heretics, is trying to stop the invasion of the demonic noble.
Alchemy Is Magic: All over the place. The Iron Sultanate is the biggest example so far, using alchemy to enhance their soldiers and to create artificial lifeforms. New Antioch and the Heretic Legions also utilize alchemy, though not to the same extent as the Sultanate.
Alien Space Bats: The game takes place in a world where the Knights Templar unleashed Hell on Earth during the First Crusade, and all of humanity's subsequent history has been shaped by the ensuing war.
- The Muslim states were unified under the Iron Sultanate after its formation from the Sultanate of Rûm in 1109. The Fatimid Caliphate was entirely overrun by the forces of Mammon, with only a few die-hard Mamluk guerrillas continuing to resist the Heretics.
- The Black Death was a supernatural plague unleashed by Beelzebub, now known as the Black Grail. Outbreaks continue to this day, and its victims rise again as hell-puppeted zombies.
- Instead of crusading against the English, Joan of Arc became famous for slaying an exalted avatar of Beelzebub and driving the Grail from mainland Europe.^note
- The Antipapacy of Avignon still took place, but here it was founded by a disgruntled cardinal^note who pledged himself to Beelzebub after he lost the papal election, turning Avignon into a City of the Damned and the main outpost of the Black Grail in Europe.
- The city of Antioch was destroyed by unknown means (speculated to be some kind of demonic superweapon) in 1545, rather than being razed by the Egyptian sultan Baibars in 1268.
- The Hashashin fortress of Alamut still exists, though it has been under siege by heretical forces for centuries.
- The city of Argos is "taken by God" in 1477, and is now entirely gone. With zero elaboration on what that even means.
- The Reformation apparently got butterflied out of existence, since there is no mention of Protestantism. One can only guess that the ongoing demonic incursion left little space for religious reform. The Wars of Triclavianism seem to fill the same space as various Protestant vs. Catholic conflicts, and take after the Sacramentarian schism over whether or not the body and blood of Christ is literally manifested and consumed during the Eucharist.
- The Sacred Order of the Dragon turned back a Heretic invasion after the fall of Byzantium in 1574 and is said to have impaled a million heretics in the hills of Wallachia, suggesting that Vlad III Țepeș is seen as a great hero in this timeline.^note
- The Heretic forces overran Gibraltar in 1666, making it their key base in western Europe.
- The New World has yet to be mentioned in official documents, suggesting that the demands of the Great War have prevented the British, Spanish, French, and Portuguese from sending their exploratory/colonial fleets across the Atlantic. The Portuguese have apparently made contact in the New World to justify the existence of New World crops being present in Europe, and Heretic attempts to invade the New World are being repelled by the indigenous peoples.
- Admiral Horatio Nelson was killed fighting a Heretic fleet at the Battle of the Bloodied Cliffs in 1805, which ended in defeat for the English. Though he and his ship HMS Bellerophon were lost with all souls, his valiant rearguard action caused the destruction of the Heretic flagship, the Great Red Dragon, and allowed the remnants of the Royal Navy to limp back to England to fight another day.
- In 1807, Ireland was invaded and conquered by Heretic forces, but thanks to the efforts of Paladin Anséis and the rebel queen Brigid, Hell's armies were eventually driven off the island after a bloody campaign which included the deaths of all of the Duke of Antioch's bodyguard and the loss of half of Eire's population.
- The Holy Roman Empire still exists in the present day, as The Napoleonic Wars never happened. It also appears to still be the main Christian powerhouse in Europe, as the Emperor is held in equal reverence to the Supreme Pontiff.
- The Free State of Prussia is an oligarchical republic rather than the centralized absolutist monarchy which it was in real history. Its nobility nevertheless retains a very disciplined martial tradition.
- Released maps of Europe suggest that the Golden Khanate still exists in 1914 as a Vestigial Empire ruling over the Caspian coastal regions. How the rest of Asia looks further east than that is still a mystery yet to be revealed.
- Demons have infiltrated the Nordic regions and have passed themselves off as the Norse gods, but not all of the Vikings have submitted, knowing they are demons.
- The first submarines appeared in the Heretic fleets in 1866 and were in widespread use by 1870. Likewise, tanks were in use by 1894.
- Geneticist and Catholic monk Gregor Mendel's last name is the inspiration for the Mendelist Order, the monastic order that oversees the genetic engineering and training of New Antioch's Super Soldiers, and has repeatedly cloned corrupted copies of Jesus. They're implied to have been active since around the 17th century, while our timeline's Mendel lived some 200 years later.
- Perhaps most notably, the Church enacted a space program in 1899.
- According to the official maps, Iceland is known as "Ultima Thule", and the lore indicates that the heretics have a strong presence here, supported by the ice demons and infernal machines.
- There is something older and more feral than Abrahamic religion sitting in the bottom of Hell, and it's apparently the cause of things like the Biblical Leviathan.
- France remains a kingdom, indicating that the French Revolution never took place
Allohistorical Allusion:
- As mentioned above, Prussia is called a Free State in Trench Crusade, and is a republic rather than a monarchy. In real life, the Free State of Prussia was a constituent state of interbellum Germany under the Weimar Republic. And, much like in the tabletop game, it was notably more democratic than its peers^note.
- The Church having a space program reflects the fact the Vatican has had a long-standing interest in astronomy, all the way up to having a space telescope/observatory of their own.
- The Knights Templar being the ones to open up Hell and submit to it due to their sheer greed reflects the justification of the destruction of the Knights Templar by King Philip IV of France, who accused them of greed and heresy to decimate the order.
- Iceland is marked as "Ultima Thule" on the official map. In ancient geography, Ultima Thule was used as an all-encompassing term for any territory beyond the known world.
- The name of the first Hegemon of Beelzebub was Yersinia Rex. Yersinia pestis was the bacterium that caused the Black Death; in this universe, the Black Death is known as the Black Grail, also created by Beelzebub. The second Hegemon was called Febris, the scientific name for fever.
- A powerful cardinal in Avignon who failed to claim the papacy sold his soul to Beelzebub, turning the city into a haven for the Black Grail; not only is this a reference to the antipope, it's likely also a reference to how half of Avignon was wiped out by the Black Death while Pope Clement VI reigned from there.
Alternate Calendar: In a case of Shown Their Work, while dates in the official timeline are given in Anno Domini (Year of Our Lord) counting from Jesus' birth, dates specific to the Iron Sultanate are instead given in Anno Hegirae (Year of the Hijra) counting from Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina, known as the Hijrah in Arabic and Hegira in Latin. Converting one to the other is a bit tricky since the Hijri year is a Lunar calendar, but it starts in 622 AD and the present day of the setting would be 1332 to 1333 AH.
Always Chaotic Evil: To be able to stare into the Jerusalem hellgate and survive/not be left in a permanent state of scorched agony, Heretic Legion candidates must be truly evil people. Those who are able to walk through the gates are the vilest of the vile and become the Anointed of the Legions.
Ambiguously Human: No one knows who or what the Angel of Mercy is — she is always wearing a full-body suit and a face-obscuring gas mask. She's able to fly and can hear the calls of those who sustained painful, mortal wounds or are broken by how awful the world is, and her executions are always painless. No side claims her for their own, though the fact that she is a seemingly spectral entity that can fly and constantly wears a gas mask would point to her being related in origin to the Trench Ghosts (though far more benevolent than any other known Trench Ghost if that's what she is).
And I Must Scream:
- Getting infected by one of Beelzebub's many illnesses is not pleasant — if you're lucky, you become a bloated maggot-fly thing constantly suppurating in pain as you are forced to commit atrocities in the name of Hell. If you're not, you're ill in a thousand different ways forever.
- Anyone who tries to go to the Hell Gate who has a spark of decency inside ends up aflame and undying, forever — only the truly monstrous can pass through as servants of hell.
Angelic Abomination: A description of what might have been an angel intervening in a battle involves a formless, inscrutable light appearing in the sky, making almost everyone in the field die via mass Brown Note, causing the heads of those who survive to spontaneously combust, and finally driving the Sole Survivor, justifiably, insane. All of this is perceived by the survivor as the angel merely speaking.
Angels, Devils and Squid: The Path of the Beast is an Eldritch force far older and more feral than the Abrahamic forces — they are noticeably more animalistic than the other forces of Hell, and predate Hell itself.
Arbitrary Headcount Limit: The game uses "ducats" as a currency system to purchase models and equipment, the open goal being to play with warbands of around a dozen models strong, with a recommended cap of 900 ducats for building one's army list in a one-off game. Moreover, there is often a restriction on the most powerful models, and you will likely only be able to take maybe one or two of the biggest monsters or most armored units. There are rules to set up campaigns which grant more ducats to spend and grow one's warband across several consecutive battles.
Artistic License – History:
- The Knights Templar are depicted as being active during the First Crusade in 1099. In reality, they weren't founded until 1119.
- The Molotov Cocktail, first invented in 1936 and named as such in 1939, has appeared a few decades early and is still being called a "Molotov" despite the fact that the Finns are using them to fight ice demons, not the Soviets.^note
- Likewise, rocket-propelled grenade launchers have been developed thirty years earlier than they were in real life. Then again, this might have been to do with the demons on humankind's doorstep.
Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Anyone who has risen to command a warband is more or less guaranteed to have plenty of combat experience, particularly the lieutenants of New Antioch and the Yüzbaşi captains of the Iron Sultanate.
Back from the Dead: With both divine and infernal interference, death is not nearly as permanent as it used to be:
- Martyr-Penitents are Trench Pilgrims that have died in battle and been resurrected by the Seventh Meta-Christ. They are usually driven insane by the constant pain of their injuries and the existential horror of their resurrection and descend into religious madness.
- Heretic Choristers are born from those who commit ritual self-mutilation and suicide to spite God; if their death is pleasing enough to the lords of Hell, they are resurrected nine days later as animate corpses whose severed heads sing diabolical hymns of the Inferno.
Badass Normal: The Yeomen of New Antioch, the Azebs of the Iron Sultanate, and the Trench Pilgrims, who are normal humans armed with bolt-action rifles, jezzails, trench clubs, swords, shotguns, and flamethrowers and are fighting against and alongside alchemical monsters, chemically and divinely enhanced super soldiers, demonic beasts, and twisted creatures wrought in the forges of Hell.
Bare Hands Barely Hurt: For most models, it is possible to cheap out on giving them a melee weapon, but if an infantryman has to fight barehanded, they suffer a disadvantage on both rolls to hit and wound, making it distinctly more difficult to accomplish anything.
Base on Wheels: The Moving Fortress of Britannia is a titanic battleship that is capable of moving over land and sea. It is so massive that it can house an entire fortress of knights and enough artillery to defeat any Heretic invasion. How this behemoth can move itself is a fiercely-guarded secret of the English Crown, though it is strongly implied to actually be a hovercraft, or powered by some magical or supernatural means.
Beast Man:
- Yoke Fiends are distant descendants of the original Fallen Angels interbreeding with the creatures of the physical world, but generations of crossbreeding have caused them to degenerate into twisted, hideous amalgamations of bestial and human features. Though broadly unintelligent, Yoke Fiends remain dimly aware of their fall from grace, and harbour immense resentment against all of Creation as a result. The Archdevils commonly use them as cheap labour and expendable Mooks when hunting in the mortal world.
- The Missionaries of the Black Grail were born of a union of the Antipope of Avignon and a Grail-stricken sow. They are far smarter and more independent than most servants of the Black Grail, and are devoted to spreading the cult of Beelzebub to willing mortals rather than overrunning the Earth with plague.
Beelzebub: One of Hell's most prominent princes, he's got special significance in the setting due to unleashing the Black Grail upon the world, and having his own unique faction, the Cult of the Black Grail, within the game.
Beast of the Apocalypse: According to Church of the Beast lore, their demonic patron is the Zygotic Lord, a massive (but still foetal) creature being nurtured by a placenta the size of the moon. When it is finally birthed, it will grind the cities of Man to dust.
Bestiality Is Depraved: The lower ranks of the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent are filled with demons who are hybrids of the original Fallen Angels and beasts, several generations removed; also, the Missionaries of the Black Grail are all the offspring of the Antipope of Avignon and a massive, Black Grail-corrupted sow. And their couplings are usually public affairs during (un)holy days and festivals.
BFG: Thanks to alchemical processes that allow humans and homunculi to grow to gigantic proportions, they can be armed with some truly big guns. For instance, the Communicant Anti Tank Hunters wield anti-materiel rifles that are twice as long as a man is tall.
BFS: The Gardekorps of the Free State of Prussia have anti-tank zweihanders, nanomolecular blades of orichalcum alloys almost as long as their users are tall. They can slice open a tank's armor and sever its treads with little trouble, let alone any infantry trying to stop the user from doing so.
Bio Punk: The Iron Sultanate's House of Wisdom has made great strides in biotechnology, especially in the creation of homunculi who serve the Sultan's army with distinction, even occasionally acting as the Sultan's direct bodyguards. Amongst their most notable creations are the Brazen Bulls, enormous, armored homunculi that pack enormous guns that can pulverize anything in their path.
Black-and-Gray Morality: The forces of the Church and New Antioch are ruthless, oppressive regimes that turn criminals and sinners into suicide bombers, punish any sign of heresy or deviance with extreme prejudice, beat and execute anyone who doesn't display "sufficient piety" (read: isn't happy with living in a neverending war with literal Hell itself), employ torture devices as weapons of war, work thousands of laborers to death to fuel the demands of their war machine, and have committed blasphemy by creating horrific, mutated clones of Jesus himself. Their Muslim "allies" in the Iron Sultanate are not much better; they're just as guilty of oppression as New Antioch, they create unholy alchemical abominations, and they've been sending countless men into the meatgrinder for generations. It's heavily implied that this authoritarian rule causes a lot of in-fighting, if not willing conversions to Satan. On the other hand, they are fighting the literal forces of Hell, who openly engage in cannibalism, torture, child sacrifice and the wholesale massacre of countless civilians — be they the Church's adherents or their own servants. The armies of Gehenna also spread hideous plagues and famines, and their ultimate objective is to ruin all of God's creation and make humanity the eternal slaves and playthings of Hell.
Black Magic: Goetic magic is the magic of Hell, born from the torment of mortals and the perversion of God's work, although this only lasts briefly as God reasserts his omnipresence returning his work to reality, normally only Demons can use it but Heretic Priests and other important Heretics are able to channel the power of their infernal patrons, although in exchange these Heretics kill in their names, both on the battlefield and with twisted rituals where they murder the innocent on sacrificial Altars. The lore indicates that without Goetic magic the Heretics would lose much of an advantage since it is this unholy magic that guides their infernal artillery and keeps alive the barbed wire that protects their fortifications.
Black Knight:
- The Plague Knights of the Order of the Fly are mortals who secretly worship Beelzebub. When they are infected by the Black Grail, rather than being consumed by it or turned into a mindless thrall, they are instead warped into half-living creatures clad in suits of black armor that resemble flies.
- The Hell Knights of the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent are minor demons or ascended warriors who have been folded into their armor like origami and forced to serve more powerful lords of Hell as punishment for their transgressions.
Blessed with Suck: Observers are able to hear the Voice of God, which has led them to victory by providing valuable information. Unfortunately, the process to become an Observer is painful, and the result is that the Observer has to be heavily sedated at all times, as they cannot sleep due to the Voice of God being 24/7 and loud, while being hopped up enough to be able to quickly comprehend God's voice to extract useful data out of what is essentially a wall of noise consisting of the past, present, and future.
Blood Iron: The Assassins of the Sultanate wield iron daggers smelted from the toxin-laced blood of their young initiates.
Blood Magic: Goetic Warlocks and Sorcerers of the Court use blood markers to fuel their spells; in-universe, goetic magicians frequently sacrifice slaves and prisoners to empower themselves.
Blood Upgrade: Stigmatic Nuns grow more powerful as they receive injuries; in-game, they can convert wound markers into blessing markers, allowing them to roll extra dice for their actions.
Body Horror: A general feature of the setting all around. Notable examples include the Church's Communicants, the Iron Sultanate's Takwin creations, and especially anything to do with the Cult of the Black Grail and the Path of the Beast.
Cannibalism Superpower: Communicants are created by consuming the cloned flesh and blood of Jesus. Doing so grants them immense size and strength and a powerful Healing Factor.
The Church: In this timeline the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have apparently reconciled their differences in the face of the war with Hell and become one singular Church known as the "New Orthodoxy." Additionally, the Protestant Reformation seems to have never occurred, likely because any attempt to defy the Church in order to spark such an internal reform would've been instantly decried as Heresy to distract from the war effort and would've gotten Martin Luther executed in short order.
Citadel City: New Antioch is the one fortress of the Christian world still standing in the Levant. Described as the "Sword and Shield of Europa and Africa", New Antioch was built on the ruins of Antioch after it was destroyed in 1545 and has been maintained and manned by all the God-devoted nations of Europe and Africa for the last three centuries, withstanding eight assaults by the forces of Hell in that time. It is manned by soldiers from both continents, but also has dozens of factories churning out weapons and ammunition, receives supplies and troops from all over the world to maintain its garrison, and has hundreds of Anchorites embedded in the walls keeping an eternal watch.
City of the Damned: Many such exist within the Levant now, mighty metropoli controlled by the various Heretic cults. Within Europe, the cardinal of Avignon declared himself the anti-pope and desecrated the city's Grand Chapel, rendering the entire city unsalvageably polluted and a constant weeping sore on the face of France. The Faithful forces now require a permanent cordon sanitaire around the hellish city, lest the contagion spills out again.
Clone Angst: Lions of Jabir are artificial combat homunculi created by the House of Wisdom in service to the Iron Sultanate. While most of them are animalistic in nature with intelligence to match, there are a few cases where a Lion came out of the vat with human-like intelligence, which leads to the development of severe mental anguish and existential dread due to their unnatural origin.
Clone Degeneration: One piece of flavor text implies that the bodies of the Meta-Christs are rather unstable.^note
The meta-christ did cut its flesh, and gave it to the disciples. It's ruined mouth could not form the words, but it grunted noises that the mendelist monk translated as "Take, eat; this is my body." And the meta-christ did leak blood from its eyes and mouth, which the mendelist monk caught in a chalice, once again translating the meta-christ's painful noises, "Drink ye all of it…"
Clone Jesus: As stated above, the Church has created multiple clones of Jesus, known as the Meta-Christs. Unlike most examples, their actual divinity and good nature remains intact, rather than inverting or simply not being present. Their flesh and blood is used to produce super-soldiers known as Communicants.
Combat Medic: The Principality of New Antioch fields Combat Medics, sisters of a religious order trained in medicine as well as combat to treat allies and remove Blood Markers from nearby friendly models. Conversely, they can also easily finish off downed enemies as well, though their Misericordia is only enough to kill humans and not demons or other sick horrors.
Conspicuous Consumption: The Knights of Avarice make this a game mechanic: apart from Wretches, no model in a Knights of Avarice list may cost less than 80 ducats, because they refuse to accept anyone poor. Your Anointed and Artillery Witches will be fine, but if you want to bring a basic Heretic Trooper, they'll need to be holding a heavy weapon or festooned in other upgrades to reach the minimum.
Cool Helmet: Many soldiers wear medieval-styled helmets that encompass their entire heads and also have gas masks built into them.
Crapsack World: A full third of the world is ruled by Hell, forcing the rest into endless military mobilization to prevent them from overrunning and damning the whole Earth. The nations of the faithful aren't exactly good either, brutally persecuting the slightest deviation from doctrine with mass executions and celebrating the deaths of factory workers in industrial accidents for their service to the war effort.
Creepy Souvenir: Plenty, as pretty much any faction has someone with something grisly decorating their wargear.
- The Heretic Trooper shown in the Lore Primer is carrying the desecrated corpse of an infant on their belt.
- The Heretic Chorister, not to be outdone, proudly carries its own severed head into battle.
- On the side of the Faithful, Éire Rangers who operate under New Antioch's command proudly uphold the tradition of headhunting passed down by their pagan ancestors. They insist on carrying the skulls of slain heretics with them, much to the consternation of the church.
- Shrine Anchorites of the Cavalcade of the Tenth Plague are depicted in the Lore Primer with a sacrificial lamb tied to them like a massive pendant, its blood dabbed on the Anchorite's chassis. And that's not even mentioning the bloodied, broken body of a Trench Pilgrim tied to the Anchorite's Catherine Wheel.
Critical Existence Failure: Averted in the rules, as they do not incorporate a hit point system like other tabletop games, but rather use a more nuanced one. If any model is wounded, the players roll 2 dice on an injury chart and depending on the result, they can be counted as "Out", basically eliminated from play, but also "Down" which is an injured state from which a model can stand back up later. Moreover, most if not all sources of damage add "Blood Markers" to a wounded model, which can be used up as an extra die to roll for more grievous injuries. Special rules, for instance models with the keyword "Tough", make a model harder to put down.
Critical Hit: When using any weapon with the "Critical" rule, success to hit an enemy with a roll of 12 or more grants a +2 dice bonus when rolling to wound, greatly enhancing the chances of outright taking out a model.

D-G

Dead Person Conversation: The Church can talk to the spirits of long-dead saints via esoteric machines connected to the saint's remains. The Church only does this in the direst of circumstances as the language the saint speaks is usually long dead and forgotten, alongside other concerns...
Decomposite Character: Trench Crusade uses the more ancient interpretation of Christian demonology, where Lucifer and Satan are two separate beings. Together with Beelzebub, they form the ruling Triumvirate of Hell.
Demon Lords and Archdevils: Hell seems to be the classic depiction of an infernal hierarchy where demons with various feudal titles jockey for power and influence. Unlike most versions, however, the position of the Patrons of the Seven Deadly Sins, and thus the ruling council of all Hell, appears to not be set, but rather to shift between a variety of major demonic kings and princes based on Hell's internal schemes and plots.
Demon Sorcerer: Sorcerers from the Court of the Seven-headed Serpent are demons spawned from tiny fragments of the original Fallen, frozen in the moment of their downfall. This angelic heritage allows them to wield foul goetic spells, which are said to be drawn from the reality-bending powers of demons. However, God's will makes it so any alteration made from magic is merely temporary and demons therefore have need of sacrifices to fuel their powers.
Devil, but No God: Downplayed. Aside from raising the Great Iron Wall of Iskandar and the desolation of Argos, the big man Himself and his angels have yet to make a definitive impact on the setting's lore. Fallen angels are the exception, since their progeny include the Yoke Fiends of Hell. Even the Angel of Mercy may not be from Heaven. If an angel were to actually manifest on Earth, everything and everyone in the vicinity, faithful and heretic alike, shall be instantly vaporized by the wrath of God. As this can potentially end the world and drastically escalate the scale of the Great War, the Forces of Heaven very rarely take to the battlefield.
The Dreaded: There are many creatures in the no man’s land that strike fear into the hearts of both the Faithful and the Heretics. This has an effect in the game: any miniature with the classification “Feared” in its description becomes a formidable opponent. In the lore, several examples are given:
- Trench Ghosts are dreaded by both sides of the war, for they despise all living things regardless of allegiance. Even the Black Grail is a valid target for their wrath. Fortunately, they remain bound to the sacred grounds where they fell, leaving only when disturbed or when compelled to battle other ghosts.
- The Black Grail is perhaps the most loathed vision on the battlefield. The wings of its twisted creations are enough to reduce city defenders to a crying mess. Among its horrors, the Amalgam and the Lord of Tumors are especially feared: the former is a grotesque fusion of rotting flesh from multiple victims, powerful enough to kill a man simply by trampling him; the latter corrupts vast stretches of land into toxic wastelands. Even more terrifying are the Hegemons, Beelzebub’s greatest creations—thirty‑meter titans forged from sacrificed slaves and cultists. Only two have risen in the current war, and their destruction came at such a cost that the Faithful are determined to prevent the summoning of a third.
- Alamut and his assassins inspire dread among the Heretics. Even Beelzebub’s forces avoid approaching the fortress. Though it has stood for centuries, the Heretics have failed to inflict even superficial damage with their cannons, and any frontal assault is doomed to join the corpses of those who tried before.
- Heretic Choristers are worshippers of Hell who once had little hope of rising within its legions. With nothing to lose, they chose suicide—a cardinal sin—as an act of ultimate spite against God. Those whose offerings please the infernal lords are resurrected nine days later, sever their own heads, and march to the front lines, striking terror even into the bravest soldiers.
- Among the demons, one of the most feared Paladins is a woman…
Eldritch Abomination: Surpisingly (or maybe not for those who know how terrifying Abrahamic theology can be), there are several of those:
- Unfallen angels themselves, as described under Angelic Abomination, above.
- The Zygotic and Larval Lords of the Path of the Beast, with a single Larval Lord being a titanic monstrosity◊ capable of levelling cities and driving those who see it to death and madness; they are rumored to be born from Things whose presence in Hell predates the Fall of the rebellious angels.
- The Carcass Front lore revealed Leviathan, the monstrous Beast of the Sea, who also predates the Fall, looks to retaking its Seat of Envy at the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent, and looks like a hellish amalgamation of various deep-sea life forms.
The Engineer: New Antioch and Iron Sultanate warbands can include up to two Combat Engineers or Sappers respectively. These specialists can mine parts of the battlefield and clear enemy minefields. Moreover, they can expertly use explosives to destroy obstacles or fortify any position.
Enemy Civil War:
- This is the standard in Hell, where Archdevils and their legions fight against each other as often as they fight humanity. The lore indicates that this is why humanity has not lost the war.
  - The Black Grail and its leader, Beelzebub, hate all living things, especially humanity, and their forces attack any humans they encounter—Faithful or Heretic. Even the Heretic Legions who worship Gluttony, the sin that Beelzebub incarnates, are valid targets for the Prince of Flies.
  - The Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent constantly fights among its Leaders and Legions. The lore suggests they may also attack Heretic Legions for reasons known only to the Head of the Snake—even if those Legions worship him. These Heretics do not become angry at such attacks, seeing them instead as punishment for failing to cause enough pain.
  - Trench Ghosts are the souls of Heretic soldiers who die on holy grounds. Their souls are unworthy of heaven, but the sacred ground prevents them from being claimed by Hell. They remain on Earth as shadows of their former selves, without feeling anything. The ghosts envy even those infected by the Black Grail, believing eternal pain is better than feeling nothing. They attack any living being that enters their domain, even other ghosts.
Envying the Afflicted. Trench Ghosts are a warband of undead heretics who were Barred from the Afterlife after dying on Holy Ground. They feel absolutely nothing. This is so awful that they envy even Black Grail infectees, because even the agony of demonic cancer would be preferrable to the gnawing emptiness of their own existence.
Even Evil Has Standards: Inverted. Becoming a soldier of the Heretic Legions requires showing how dark your heart is to the lords of Hell. Those with lingering goodness are damned to torment, those without it join the army. In the cases where a mortal has a heart darker than a demon, Hell is immediately impressed and makes them leader of their legions.
Evil Is Bigger: The Heretic Legions and the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent are shown having access to units whose prodigious size is matched only by their great malevolence.
- The Cult of the Black Grail have the Hegemons, colossal creatures created by the sacrifice of thousands of slaves. They're thirty-meter-tall, armored monstrosities with the intelligence and strategic mind of an angel. Throughout the Great War, such is their cost in lives that only two Hegemons have ever appeared: Yersinia Rex, the Emperor of Pestilence, and Febris, the Bride of Beelzebub. Both were destroyed, but at great cost; Yersinia was felled by the Paladin Engelier, but he managed to take the holy warrior with him. Febris, however, was vanquished by the living Saint Joan of Arc.
- The Heresiarchs are the mutated and corrupted form of the Knights Templar that opened the gates of Hell eight centuries ago. The Heresiarch in the Lore Primer is a titanic monstrosity with no face, horned shoulders, four breasts, and a cloak and cape melded to its flesh. Its clawed hand clutches an enormous sickle as levitating stone tablets wreathed in lightning surround the Heresiarch's infernal frame.
Evil Is Sterile: Downplayed with fallen angels. They can produce children, but their power fades over generations, devolving from the mighty praetors to the pathetic, bestial yoke fiends. This is what motivates Moloch, current serpent head of Envy, who despises that humans can reproduce themselves freely and thus greatly rewards child sacrifice.
Evil Is Visceral: While the human models are grim looking and fearsome at times, the models from the Cult of the Black Grail and the Court of Seven-headed Serpents are terrifying flesh amalgams with tentacles, exposed innards, and completely unnatural anatomy such as multiple arms, extra mouths and eyes in all the wrong places, and fleshy tendrils covering their bodies.
Expy:
- Beelzebub and his forces are more or less duplicates of the Chaos God Nurgle from the Warhammer franchise with a consistent theme of gross decay and plague imagery, though Beelzebub is portrayed as much more outwardly malevolent — at least Nurgle is kind to his followers and gives them a twisted sort of hope.
- New Antioch's status as a fortified Citadel City, holding the line at a Hellgate to contain the horrors that spill out from there at any cost brings to mind Warhammer 40,000's Cadia, before its destruction.
- The status of Leviathan as an immortal and ancient entity, chained at the bottom of the sea—with his body incapacitated but his mind and power actively influencing the human world—creating heretic fleets and troops devoted to him, is quite similar to Cthulhu.
Eye Scream: The Church's Communicants have blessed crosses hammered into their eye sockets. New Antioch's Sniper Priests ritually blind themselves as a sign of devotion to God. It should be noted that this does not make them any less effective, as Communicants are stated to be more aware of their surroundings when blinded, and Sniper Priests can score kills from kilometers away.
Eyes Do Not Belong There: Communicants have cyst-like eyes growing randomly on their bodies. Paradoxically, their original eyes are often either covered up or wholly removed.
Fallen Hero: Desecrated Saints are one of the most prized possessions in the Court of Seven-headed Serpent, consisting of potential saints and heroes that have somehow been corrupted and encased into a suit of Cocytus armour to fight on behalf of Satan.
Fan Disservice: An illustration of a Stigmatic Nun appears in the playtest rules; she's a shapely woman wearing only a helmet, shoulder and arm plates, loincloth, and knee-high boots...and her nude torso is drenched in blood that's pouring freely from the eye slits of her helmet.
Fantasy Metals: The metalworkers of the Church, guided by St. Eligius, can produce orichalcum, a type of steel alloy infused with divine light. Though extremely costly to produce, it's much stronger than normal steel and able to withstand a hail of bullets. Meanwhile, the Heretic Legions have access to Infernal metals, which are beyond the strength of normal steel, yet they burn the bodies and souls of the person using them.
Fat Bastard: Sin Eaters, sinners who were so greedy in life that they were forced to gorge on the flesh of other sinners — and have thus acquired a taste for flesh. They are bulbous, hideous, and rotund — it is said that their armor is partially meant to keep them from bursting open with all the meat they gorge upon. They go so far as to work for anyone who can pay them in sinners' flesh.
Flash Step: The Assassins are capable of flash-stepping across the battlefield thanks to special rituals and powerful hallucinogens. In-game, this manifests as them being allowed to make extra moves and attack multiple targets during their turn.
Functional Magic: Both sides of the Great War are able to utilize several forms of magic against their enemies:
- The Faithful are primarily users of alchemy; the Iron Sultanate makes extensive use of the practice, while the Christians mainly just use it to enhance their mechanized troopers and to make Communicants.
- The Forces of Hell meanwhile use goetic magic; which functions as both Black Magic and Blood Magic, as it is powered solely by the pain and suffering of mortals.
Forever War: The Great War began when a group of Knights Templar opened the gates of Hell in 1099. 815 years later, humanity is still waging a brutal and bloody war against Hell's legions, with no end in sight.
Gameplay Randomization: To determine the outcome of most actions, players are required to roll 2 dice and compare the result to a chart to see if the action fails or succeeds. Depending on the rules, models and equipment, the roll is subject to flat bonuses or penalties, or to +1 or -1 Dice bonus/penalties whereby the player add or takes away a dice from their roll, and either can take the best results or has to use the worst results.
Gas Mask Mook: Many of the basic troops in the game wear gas masks, befitting the World War I-era setting, and adding to their grim dehumanized appearance. This applies to the Heretic Troopers who are Malevolent Masked Men, but also to the Iron Sultanate's Azebs and the Yeomen of New Antioch.
God and Satan Are Both Jerks: The uncharitable interpretation of the Great War is that God is a lazy, petty tyrant who is letting humanity do the dirty work for Him and allowing the holy men of His religions to commit atrocity and repress His people while damning those who aren't "sufficiently pious" enough (that is: enjoys being in a Hellish Forever War) or for the most minor sins. On the other hand, Satan remains as evil as the average depiction and baby-eating, mass murder in the name of Satan's war, rape, mass torture, and other delights done for the Hell of it are soup du jour for him. According to Word of God, the pagans in the north who did not fall for Hell's forces claiming to be their old gods view both Hell's legions and the Faithful as invaders for this reason.
God's Hands Are Tied: Comparatively to other depictions of YHWH in media, where even the most minor intercessions by the Almighty basically become an Instant-Win Condition for His faithful; here, the only direct assistance for the forces of the Faithful that can be attributed to Him are the raising of the Iron Wall of Dhu al-Qarnayn to protect the Sultanate of Rûm, and possibly Gregor Mendel being able to clone the Meta-Christs, allowing for the creation of Communicants. Every other weapon in the arsenal of the Faithful has either come from human artifice (takwin homunculi, Jabirian alchemy, the vast technological base of New Antioch, the discovery of Orichalcum steel, etc.) or has been an indirect manifestation of divine power (the melee prowess and seeming imperviousness to pain of Stigmatic Nuns, the uncanny sharpshooting of the blind Sniper Priests, the ability for Observers and Tacticians of the Synod to hear the Voice of God, etc.); compared to the forces of Hell, and especially the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent and the Cult of the Black Grail, being able to directly send demonic monstrosities into the real world and call upon much more obviously supernatural abilities via goetic magic, God very rarely intercedes directly on behalf of mankind. The implication in the lore is that Hell's forces simply haven't escalated the conflict to the point where the Almighty would be forced to take a firmer hand, on top of God understanding that doing so could in fact be more ruinous to the world that the current status quo; even sending a single angel down to Earth is the equivalent of letting off a Fantastic Nuke that will wipe out everything around its impact site, friend and foe alike, so God likely doesn't simply send His forces en masse because He ultimately wants something of His creation to survive the Great War.
Godzilla Threshold:
- The Church's Paladins march out only when it's absolutely necessary. They and their armor and weapons have proven to be irreplaceable despite the Church's best efforts, and three of their order have already been lost. When they are sent into the darkest depths of Hell's circles, the Paladin knows full well that they will receive no assistance, backup, or any kind of help in their mission.
- Praying for an angel — if it's even possible — will annihilate the area it appears in, friend or foe alike. As such, Heaven cannot directly intervene in the war unless absolutely needed.
The Great Wall: The great Iron Wall of Dhu al-Qarnayn, which according to the lore (i.e. Sultanate propaganda) was manifested by God Himself to protect the Sultanate of Rûm and still protects the Iron Sultanate to this day. The wall itself is composed of brilliant, shining steel set with innumerable gemstones, and even after centuries remains warm to the touch. Any damage inflicted by the enemy will be repaired by molten lava coursing within the structure, leaving no marks of attack or disrepair. It is the greatest defensive structure in the world, manned by the Sultanate's many Azebs, Sappers, and Janissaries, armed with hundreds of pieces of artillery, with only four gates, each guarded by colossal Jabirean takwin crafted to resemble the mythical Buraq.
Greed: The Knights of Avarice are servants of Mammon, the Prince of Greed himself. They go into battle wearing golden armor and glittering finery and loot everything of value from the battlefield after claiming victory. Their special abilities revolve around inspiring overwhelming greed in their opponents to force them off their game. Mammon himself is also fittingly mainly driven by this, as his stated objective for trying to take Ethiopia is to loot the churches of Lalibela and to take control of the Queen of Sheba's famed gold mines.
Green-Eyed Monster: Combined with The Resenter. Moloch, currently the Head of the Serpent of Envy, is the Archdemon that demands the most sacrifices of innocents from his followers, his favorites being children, even more so if their sacrifice is in front of their parents since their pain and misery brings temporary calm to the envy that corrodes him day and night. This is because before his fall, as a Seraphim, Moloch wished to be able to create his own followers, something that was denied to him, but upon discovering how this gift was given to humans and not to him despite his exalted status, his jealousy slowly turned into homicidal envy and now his personal mission is to deny his hated father the small fruits of creation.
Grim Up North: Apart from the main Hellgate kept permanently opened in Jerusalem, the accumulated sins and heresies humanity has stooped to since their inception have weakened the fabric of Creation enough for a secondary, minor portal, known as the Hellmouth, to ocassionally open in the far north of the Kola Peninsula. This gate only opens sporadically and briefly, but it is sufficient to disgorge a legion of Hell onto the Scandinavian peninsula. Though these hosts are usually checked by the northern Faithful realms, they have reduced much of Kola and Karelia to a burned, ashen waste, populated by demon-worshipping pagans and the bestial remnants of prior invasions.
Guns Are Worthless: Averted. Even demons are beings of flesh and bone and thus a rifle stands a good chance at wounding monsters on the battlefield. The caveat is that bullet wounds are minor wounds when one is a crazed mutated monstrosity, but enough of them can fell a Prince of Hell. And there's nothing that can resist an anti-materiel rifle for long.

H-P

The Hashshashin: Present as an elite unit for the Iron Sultanate. Their order has not only endured up til 1914, but they also have thrived. Their collaboration with the Sultan led to the Assassins becoming an order of elite infiltrators trained in stealth and assassination and also using spells to bend spacetime.
Hellgate: The main inciting incident of Trench Crusade is the Gate of Hell being opened in Jerusalem by a band of heretic Knights Templar during the First Crusade. At least one secondary Hellmouth has since started sporadically opening in the far north of Scandinavia. Another one was opened in Ireland as part of the great Heretic invasion in the 19th century.
Hell on Earth: In the year 1099 Anno Domini, the Knights Templar committed the act of ultimate heresy and opened the gates of Hell in Jerusalem. Since then, the armies of Hell and their heretic minions have conquered most of the Levant and waged war on the world for supremacy. As it stands, Europe and the Middle East are besieged and plunged into a Forever War against demons and heretics.
Historical Villain Upgrade: The crusaders of the First Crusade got an upgrade from religious fanatics to straight-up demon worshippers. Historically, most of them were known for being upright... even when the rest of the Crusaders weren't. Likewise, the antipapacy of Avignon is actually an anti-papacy, as in a demonic counterpart to the Catholic papacy, rather than just being illegitimate and not officially recognized by the Church.
Holy Hand Grenade: All over the place in the armies of Christendom, as the Church combines divine materials and insight with modern technology. The forces of Hell do much same but from infernal metals of Tartarus, making them Unholy Hand Grenades. The Trench Pilgrims can acquire literal Holy Hand Grenades of Antioch (grenades made from the church bells of the original Antioch).
Holy Is Not Safe: No one is truly free of sin, and so the holy forces that Heaven can channel can kill without distinction. Even mortals that channel the wrath of God, such as the Witchburner General, can set anyone ablaze in holy flames, even those on his own side if they get too close at the wrong time. And it's been stated that if an actual angel were to show up on a battlefield, absolutely nothing would survive.
Hollywood Apocrypha: In this timeline, the Bible has been extensively rewritten into the New Orthodox Syncretic Bible, with the addition of new books such as Novae Revelations, the Battle Psalms, Cataclysms, and Divinations. The verses sprinkled throughout the lore primer and rules read like the grimmest and bloodiest parts of the Old Testament on steroids, exhorting the faithful to war and offering up predictions of death, destruction, and suffering.
Hopeless War: In the First Crusade, the Knights Templar opened up a portal to Hell underneath Jerusalem, causing the Holy Land to fall into darkness and the legions of Satan to come pouring out to unleash their unbridled fury and cruelty on mankind. That was 1099. It is now 1914, and there is no sign anywhere that the war against Hell will ever end. In fact, it looks like mankind is slowly but surely losing, and the horrific stalemate is just delaying the inevitable doomsday.
Horror Hunger: Associated primarily with Hell and the forces sworn to Beelzebub, the Lord of Gluttony, though other examples crop up as well:
- Sin Eaters were once starving wretches, insatiable gourmands, or priests who became obsessed with devouring the sins and eventually the bodies of their congregations. Bloated to enormous size and often clad in super-heavy plate, these heretical mutants now wish to gorge themselves on the flesh of the sinners whose guilt they once assuaged.
- Pit Locusts are hellish creatures of mysterious origin, like nightmarish chimeras of insects, hounds, horses and men, with a massive fanged maw brimming with insatiable hunger. Some say they were angels once, lesser Fallen who gorged themselves on so much blood upon the sacrificial altars that they discarded any semblance of higher intellect, including their very names. Now a buzzing, ravenous horde of monsters, they are let loose ahead of a demonic host to harass and disrupt enemy armies before battle is joined.
Human-Demon Hybrid: Praetors are the cambion commanders of the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent, although unusually they are said to actually descend from beasts, such as hyenas and jackals, rather than humans on their mortal side. Their mortal shell crudely mimics the original angelic appearance of their infernal sires, with four monstrous faces and facsimile wings made of flesh and gore. Due to being essentially mortal creatures themselves, they can slip in and out of Hell freely to lead the infernal hunting parties. The Praetors themselves resent their lowly status, however, and seek to perform great deeds so that they may be elevated to true demonhood.
Human Resources: The legions of Hell make plenty of use of the flesh, blood, and bone of their servants and captives, but the Church and the Iron Sultanate aren't above doing the same. The Church uses the cloned flesh and blood of Jesus (the Meta-Christs) to create Communicants. The Assassins of the Sultanate are fed a diet of poisonous plants and animals that gradually turns their blood into a potent toxin; this blood is then drawn and smelted into a poisonous iron that they use to make their signature daggers.
I'm a Humanitarian: It's implied that cannibalism is common in the heretic domains. Human flesh is sold by the pound in Hell's markets, and those who are captured by the Heretic Legions are often butchered for meat. The Sin Eaters, especially, crave the flesh of sinners and will work for anyone who will reward them with delicious sinful flesh. On the Faithful side, cannibalism most prominently takes the form of the creation of Communicants, which involves the literal consumption of the body and blood of a Meta-Christ.
Immune to Fire: Since they come from the fiery pits of Hell, demons scoff at man-made fire and thus, in-game, models with the Demonic trait can ignore Blood Markers caused by Fire.
Improbable Aiming Skills: New Antioch's Sniper Priests ritually blind themselves and use their faith in God to guide their aim. One such Priest is said to have killed a target from three miles away.
In Mysterious Ways: Godzilla Threshold aside, this is probably the main reason God doesn't intervene more directly in the war.
Ironic Name: The Heretic Legions' elite foot soldiers are known as the Anointed Ones. While they are literally anointed in the oil from the lake of fire, "Anointed One" is also the English translation of the word Messiah -- and by extension its Greek version ''Khristós'', which means 'Christ'.
Knight Templar: Unsurprisingly, given the setting, these are pretty common among the forces of the faithful, especially the ones associated with the Church such as the Trench Pilgrims. The actual Knights Templar have long since fallen out of favor — being the ones who started the Great War in the first place — but many of the crusader orders still exist and are determined to redeem themselves, no matter how many demons they have to butcher to do so.
Kraken and Leviathan: Leviathan is the central figure in the Carcass Front Expansion. According to the lore, he is one of the first creations of God, chained at the bottom of the sea until someone sets him free. Though physically bound, his powers remain potent: he seduces enough Heretics to form fleets devoted solely to him and is the creator of the Drowned Chorists. He also seeks to overthrow Moloch as the head of the Serpent of Envy.
The Legions of Hell: Represented primarily by the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent, which are actual demons straight from Hell. The Heretic Legions also represent Hell, but to a lesser extent than the Court due to being (mostly) ordinary Humans who worship the Arch-Devils, while the Cult of the Black Grail is more a supernatural plague than an actual army.
Made a Slave: The Forces of Hell regularly enslave people that have either been captured in their raids or battles, or purchased from the slave markets within their own domains. When these unfortunate souls aren't being worked to death in heretic factories or butchered for meat they are, worst of all, sold to agents of the Court of the Seven-headed Serpent and taken through the Hellgate, where they are used as subjects of torture to power the Goetic magic of the Sorcerers and other users of the dark arts.
Meaningful Rename: Supplementary material on the Discord states that upon joining the Legions, Heretic soldiers (especially those recruited from the Faithful nations) often take a new name as further declaration of their loyalty to Hell and defiance of the Almighty. These names are often drawn from cultures considered enemies of God in Biblical sources, like the Caananites, and regardless of gender. They may also include intimidating titles, like 'The Hammer of Priests', or 'The Bestial'.
Menacing Stroll: The Witchburner General, to the point it's enforced by the rules: He cannot take Dash actions. Not because of heavy armor or incapacity, but because the decorum of the position demands it. The end result is a general who will calmly stride into the battlefield as shells fall around him, untouchable and unapproachable (lest you be judged unworthy and burst into holy flame).
Mordor: The trenches of World War I inspired the Trope Namer. Trench Crusade adds a zombie plague and forces of spiteful ghosts.
Morale Mechanic: Several rules materialize the gruelling experience of a perpetual war against monsters. Firstly, at the end of any Turn, when at least half of one's warband is down or out of Action, the player has to roll on the action success chart to see whether the losses have demoralized the rest of the army and made them retreat. Secondly, several monstrous models have the "Fear" rule, meaning that they are particularly dreaded entities on the battlefield, and thus they inflict a -1 dice penalty in melee combat.
Mystical Plague: The Black Grail, created by Beelzebub, acts much like the Black Death, if the Black Death liquefied its victims and turned them into unliving monsters trying to spread the Grail and worship Beelzebub in grotesque mockery of the Church.
Nay-Theist: The humans who serve in Hell's legions are well aware of God's existence, but they reject him as a cruel and ineffectual deity, preferring instead to serve their infernal lords. In the Lore Primer, it's stated that if they're not being used as human sacrifices, Heretic youth are taught that YHWH is a "God-Tyrant", a weak and unmerciful being who deserves no respect, and whose worshippers deserve naught but death.
Night of the Living Mooks: Black Grail warbands are primarily made up of Grail Thralls, mindless animated corpses that are under the control of Beelzebub and the nobles of the Cult.
Non-Indicative Name: Lions of Jabir aren't lions, they're homunculi, and due to the creation process needed to make them being unique to every individual lion, are not even necessarily leonine in form. Their name comes instead from their ferocity and imposing presence.
Noodle Incident: The city of Argos was taken by God and it is no more. That is all the timeline says, with zero elaboration or context beyond that.
Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: The heretical factions draw at least some of their materiel from the limitless foundries of Hell, particularly the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent. It's directly relevant if an Artillery Witch is on the field; the bombardments she summons are forged in Hell.
Older Is Better: Shrine Anchorites are gigantic, diesel-chugging metal behemoths piloted by a monk being slowly tortured to maintain a state of constant penitent suffering. They are unwieldy, ungainly and impractical in comparison to New Antioch's cutting edge Machine Armour suits, especially seeing as the monastery that used to make Anchorites in Moravia has been destroyed. Yet, warbands that count Shrine Anchorites among their gear are fiercely protective of the machines, and refuse to trade them for newer gear, as their raw brute force, intimidating size, and awe-inspiring presence make them preferable to more modern mechanized infantry counterparts.
Only Good People May Pass:
- Abyssinian soldiers who volunteer for service in New Antioch must perform a pilgrimage in full kit to a chapel that rests on a mountainside at the height of 8500 feet. The lore mentions that there are no safety measures in place during the climb, and in each pilgrimage there are a few that lose their footing and fall. Each one of those who have fallen have been found to be a heretic infiltrator, and their broken and rotting bodies are left unburied as a warning to those traitors who would defile the sanctity of the shrine.
- Also inverted, in that anyone who wishes to serve in the Heretic Legions must have a sufficiently wicked soul instead. The candidates make a pilgrimage to the gates of Hell and only those with a blighted-enough soul will endure the infernal heat that sears their flesh and spirit. Once they get within sight of the gates, the applicants can then be recruited and equipped in hell. People with particularly sinful souls can make it into the actual gates far enough to see the Lake of Fire; those evil enough for that become Anointed instead.
Orcus on His Throne: Both God and Satan are the ultimate rulers of their respective domains, but work, at most, very secretively while their minions do the bulk of the killing and dying.
- Satan has been noted to still be Hell's ultimate ruler, but he seems to be distant from Hell's war effort, leaving the direct management thereof to the Infernal War Council and various other Archdevils and Princes.
- God's existence, while not outright confirmed in the setting, is heavily implied through things like the Orichalcum metal used by the Faithful in their heavy armour, which requires thaumaturgic intervention to be made, as well as miracles such as the Communicants. However, save for potentially being the one to materialize the Iron Wall that defends the Sultanate of Rûm, God's involvement is very indirect at most. It's been indicated that if He were to take a more active hand in the war, He'd probably wind up wiping out both sides.
Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Stigmatic Nuns continually bleed from their supernatural wounds, which match those of the Third Meta-Christ.
The Paladin: The Paladins are an elite order of warriors created in secret by the Church, the result of a Super Breeding Program. They are so holy that they can fight in Hell itself, and are clad in armor forged to let them survive in a specific circle of hell using metal mined from Mount Golgotha before Jerusalem fell. They were originally twelve in number, though two have died in service to the Lord. One is said to have turned traitor, though this claim is punishable by death.
Pistol-Whipping: Some ranged weapons can double as clubs in melee, serving as good replacement in a pinch. For example, demons use arquebuses, which are primitive firearms for the time but are massive enough to be usable as trench clubs as well.
Powered Armor: Elite soldiers of the Principality of New Antioch go into battle wearing suits of Machine Armor, which greatly augment the wearer's strength and speed. Some Processions of the Trench Pilgrims also use an older version called "Shrine Anchorites", massive, diesel-powered metal behemoths whose interiors are covered in spikes and hooks that slowly torture the pilot inside to death.
Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Synod of Strategic Prophecy utilizes children who have been surgically, genetically and chemically altered to serve as Tacticians, capable of hearing the Word of God. It's explicitly stated that the younger they are, the better suited they are for the task, since the connection is stronger the closer they are to innocence.
Putting on the Reich: In a world where Nazism, or even the nation of Germany per se, never came into being, the Heretic Troopers sport the familiar Stahlhelm and wield guns that look like Lugers. Since the domains of the Heretics are nowhere near Germany, it's likely that this trope is in effect.
Pyrrhic Victory: The Battle of the Bloodied Cliffs was a defeat for the English that cost them half of the Royal Navy and the life of Lord Horatio Nelson. However, such was the bloody toll of Nelson's defiant Last Stand that England was spared from a follow-up invasion from Heretic forces. As a result Nelson is still a legendary figure in English history to this day.
- The forces of Eire drove the Heretics out, but only after a war lasting nearly a century and at the cost of half their population.

R-Z

Reconstruction: Of the consequences of a truly divine war as well as the concept of Hell as an antagonistic force that is truly inimical to all that is good and right in the universe
- To say that the world of Trench Crusade is a daily nightmare would be an understatement; eight centuries worth of constant struggle against an implacable, inexhaustible foe with an infernal mandate to raze the world to the ground has led to a sizable chunk of humanity perishing horribly or simply giving up and siding with Hell. On the other side of the coin, the forces of the Faithful are capable of just as much necessary evil in their ever-escalating arms race against the forces of the damned, leading to some truly horrific outcomes for the men and women trying to fight the Great War (the Observers being constantly tormented by the Voice of God, Shrine Anchorites that maim their pilots to death as they are driving these siege engines, committing a near-cardinal blasphemy by consuming the cloned flesh and blood of Jesus Christ to create Communicants, just about everything the Jabirean Alchemists do or create, etc.) Just as Evil Is Not a Toy in the world of Trench Crusade, one must also remember that Holy Is Not Safe for mortals who are just as fallen and sinful in the eyes of the Almighty as the most wicked of heretics, since all were begat of the Original Sin. It's implied that a big reason that God hasn't gotten more involved in protecting His creation is that he is waiting for Hell to escalate the conflict to a point where He can justify it, as the consequences of sending even a single angel to aid mankind's struggle would be the mutual annihilation of everything around it, heretic and faithful alike; when one prays for salvation from the horrors of the world, one must remember that, in the eyes of God, a swift death and an eternity in Heaven alongside Him would be just as preferable as a finger-snap end to the Great War entirely.
- Ever since Paradise Lost was published, there have been many works that have attempted to play devil's advocate (no pun intended) for Satan and Hell, either by painting God as a divine tyrant and Satan as a justified, if misguided, rebel, or by trying to portray Hell as a rough, but still ultimately livable, locale that is seen as a genuine alternative option to going to Heaven when you die (or, as works like Hazbin Hotel posit, is a place one can ultimately be redeemed out of if they work hard enough for that second chance at salvation). Trench Crusade makes no bones about the nature of Hell; it is the source of damnation, suffering, torment, and corruption of every kind, afflicting everyone touched by it from its weakest slaves to its mightiest champions, with absolutely no respite from the nightmare of day to day existence under the infernal powers that be. Only the truly desperate or utterly insane see enslavement to the Heretic Legions as a preferable option to remaining under the regimes of the Faithful, for while New Antioch, the Iron Sultanate, and the endless Trench Pilgrim Processions venerate their struggle against the forces of Hell as a holy duty and take no chances when it comes to heretics, they all at the very least want to end the Great War and let mankind live in some semblance of peace and harmony when it's done. Hell seeks nothing short of the absolute ruination of God's creations and will stop at nothing until the whole of the Earth is turned into a charnel house for the fleeting pleasures of the Lords of Hell. To really hammer the point home, in order to even be inducted into the Heretic Legions your soul has to be black enough to withstand the mere wind gusts blowing out of the Hell Gate in Jerusalem, and only the truly wicked and depraved can withstand it enough to cross the threshold and be anointed in the oils of the Lake of Eternal Fire; you basically have to already be Made of Evil just to get your foot in the door with the forces of Hell.
Redemption Equals Death:
- The Trench Pilgrims can field Ecclesiastic Prisoners, who are sinners and heretics strapped up with explosive devices and sent on suicide charges across the battlefield to expiate their sins in death. Some are willing sinners hoping they will be redeemed in death, while others are unfortunate prisoners who the Church forces to "redeem" themselves.
- The Crusader Knights. After the Templars betrayed the Church and humanity itself by opening the gates of Hell, the Princes of the Church required every remaining member of the crusading orders to take a holy oath of penance. Ever since then, everyone who joins a Crusader Order is required to swear the same oath. They are damned from that moment on and can only gain salvation by dying in battle with Hell's forces. If they perish any other way, they will be denied last rites and buried in an unmarked mass grave with other lost souls.
The Remnant: The Mamluks are the last survivors of the Fatimid Caliphate, which was wiped out during Hell's initial invasion. While most of the caliphate's survivors retreated to the safety of the Iron Sultanate, the Mamluks chose to go to ground in the contested territory of Aegyptus and have been fighting a guerrilla war ever since. Similarly, some elements of the Varangian Guard escaped the fall of Byzantium and have continued the battle from New Antioch.
Religious Horror: The setting takes the more implicit Catholic/Christian roots of Warhammer 40,000's grimdark and makes them explicit. The Legions of Hell are from the actual Hell. The ultra-violent Knight Templar legions are actual Crusader Knights. The cloned flesh and blood of Jesus empowers the Space Marine and Primarch stand-ins. The "Eye of Terror" stand-in has engulfed Jerusalem. And so on.
Religion of Evil: From what glimpses we have seen, this is common in Heretic territories. Shrines to the Archdevils and other demons are everywhere and human sacrifices, including children, are frequent.
Schizo Tech:
- Thanks to 800 years of both divine and infernal influence, humanity has developed things like tanks, powered armor, cloning tech, alchemically enhanced super-soldiers, and hell-forged war creatures. Meanwhile, ordinary soldiers on both sides are still carrying swords, shields, and flails into battle alongside muskets, bolt-action rifles, flamethrowers, and machine guns.
- The Free State of Prussia employs zweihander-wielding shocktroopers for anti-tank duty. Apart from the fact that the metallurgy and religious blessings on the swords allow them to be Sharpened to a Single Atom, these troops◊ look like a cross between medieval knights and 19th-century hussars.
Seven Deadly Sins: As might be expected, the Legions of Hell embody the seven deadly sins. Thus far, we have seen the Knights of Avarice, who serve Mammon, the devil of greed, and Beelzebub's forces, who embody gluttony. Warbands of the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent must be dedicated to a specific sin, which unlocks different special abilities and goetic spells depending on the chosen sin.
Shout-Out: One of the items that the Trench Pilgrims can buy with glory points are special grenades crafted from the church bells of the original city of Antioch. In other words, they get the Holy Hand Grenades of Antioch.
Silly Reason for War: The official timeline mentions the Wars of Triclavianism, which tore the Christian church apart in over 90 years of civil conflict and allowing Heretic domains to expand at their expense. Triclavianism is the belief that Jesus was crucified with three nails, with another theory stating that he was crucified with four.
Slave Mooks: The Forces of Hell make regular use of slave soldiers know as the Wretched, who are offered one chance at freedom, serving on the front lines of the Great War as expendable shock troops where they may earn their freedom upon killing a great foe in service to Hell.
Stealth Expert:
- The Heretic Legions' Death Commandos are their foremost special soldiers and assassins, trained in stealth and equipped with stealth generators on their back to hide them from even God's sight. They are elite troops deployed as vanguard and sneaking through the battlefield to ambush enemies at close range.
- The Eire Rangers, hailing from Ireland, are famed scouts and reconnaissance experts who are adept at guerrilla warfare and have defended Eire from heretic incursions with great success for centuries. An Eire Rangers warband can convert its Shocktrooper models into Eire Rangers, gaining special rules that allow them to use mobile hit-and-run tactics on the battlefield.
Super-Soldier: Almost every faction has their own special elite soldiers that have been enhanced by various means:
- The primary super-soldiers of the Faithful are the Communicants, the most holy and pious pilgrims who have been chosen to partake in the experimental Chemical Communion. Upon consuming the flesh and blood of a Meta-Christ, they become immensely tall and strong, able to wield even the heaviest weapons with ease, and the wounds they suffer heal miraculously. But the process is uncertain, and there are unpredictable side effects, such as losing their ability to speak. In the very rare occasions the communion works perfectly, however, the product is a Paladin: a nigh-unstoppable, nigh-incorruptible, 17-foot-tall warrior that can go into Hell itself, wreak havoc, and return to tell the tale.
- The Principality of New Antioch, in addition to the Communicants, also fields Mechanized Heavy Troopers, elite soldiers who have received chemical enhancements and wear Powered Armor to augment their strength and speed.
- The Crusader Orders are likewise composed of knights sworn to die fighting against the forces of evil, or have their souls forever damned. The Knights undergo extensive chemical, surgical and hypnotic conditioning, rendering them stronger, tougher and more devoted than the average Faithful soldier — though the process of their creation is immensely painful and demanding.
- The Iron Sultanate has the elite Janissaries and their Yüzbaşı commanders, all of whom are trained in the arts of war since childhood, their bodies augmented by Jabirean alchemical elixirs and their minds conditioned to disregard fear, pain and mercy by sufi mystics. Truth in Television, as real-world janissary corps underwent a similar process of mental conditioning, conducted by the Bektashi order. The Sultanate also has the Assassins, who are elite killing machines created via an intense training regimen, a diet of poisonous foods, and powerful hallucinogens that allow them to Flash Step across the battlefield.
- The Anointed are heretics that have gone on a pilgrimage through the Hellgate in Jerusalem and entered the infernal realm itself. They have grown to enormous size and gained immense strength, but their flesh is permanently scarred with horrific burns as a result of their exposure to the Lake of Fire. It is said that the lake remains reflected in their gaze forevermore, giving them a literally burning glare.
Take Cover!: If a model is in contact with a piece of terrain as long at the model's base, then they count as being in cover, and thus enemies wishing to attack them at range suffer a -1 dice penalty.
Test of Pain: A common method for both the faithful and heretic forces, particularly when it comes to those wishing to enter into one of the more elite units.
- To be inducted into the Heretic Legions, recruits have to endure a pilgrimage to the gates of Hell, which gives off scorching heat even miles away. Just getting within sight of the Gates is impressive enough to be made a basic Legionnaire. Anointed are those with the strength of will to walk through the Gates to the Lake of Eternal Flame.
- Those who join the Crusader Knights must undergo a rite known as the Armor of God, in which their bodies are tattooed all over with scriptures in golden ink, then methodically flayed open so that the Oath of Penance can be engraved on their bones. Recovery from this rite can take months.
Too Many Mouths: Mongrel Supplicants, footsoldiers of the Church of the Beast, worship the Zygotic Lord (implied to be The Great Beast spoken of in Revelations; still a fetus), who "blesses" them with a profusion of maws growing from their bodies. Mouths on their backs, mouths on their chests, mouths on their stomachs, mouths on their mouths! The better to eat you with, my dear, as all those mouths want dinner. Now.
Training from Hell:
- Literally in the case of the Heretic Death Commandos, as they are children of Heretics sent to the Seventh Circle of Hell where they are trained by the infamous killers and murderers that reside there.
- Figuratively for some of the Faithful, who occasionally embrace drastic methods. Such include the Sultanate's assassins, who slowly poison young recruits over several years so their blood becomes toxic, or the Ethiopian Chewa warriors, who are trained in hand-to-hand combat from childhood and encouraged to fight the notoriously dangerous Ethiopian wildlife, including lions, to build up their skills.
Try to Fit That on a Business Card: The Iron Sultan's full title is the Great Sultan, the Padishah of Rûm, Commander of the Faithful, and Successor to the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, Custodian of the Invincible Iron Wall of the Two Horns that Pierce the Sky.
Tyke-Bomb: Most of the elite soldiers in the various factions, including the Janissaries, Death Commandos, Assassins, and Paladins, have been raised from childhood to serve their respective masters and know only the life of a killer.
Turn-Based Combat: By default, each player can only play a model in their warband at a time, before the opponent plays one of their models, and so on, until each player has exhausted each of their models.
Twisted Eucharist: The ritual wherein Communicants eat the flesh and blood of a cloned Meta-Christ entails the latter offering very literal flesh and blood from their own body to the celebrants.
Unobtainium: The Paladins' armor and weapons are crafted from metal mined from Mount Golgotha in Jerusalem. Since Jerusalem is now ground zero of the demonic incursion, mining more of it has proven difficult.
Unreliable Narrator: All lore is stated to be in-universe propaganda, leaving everything up to speculation both in-universe and out-of-universe. For example, are those who join Hell actually that moustache-twistingly evil, or are they desperate people rebelling against a totalitarian God and His equally totalitarian kingdoms?
We ARE Struggling Together: Seeing as both the Faithful and the Heretics consist of differing factions with their own agendas, infighting and bickering are common, and one of the many reasons that the war has dragged on for nearly a millennium.
- It's stated that New Antioch would have fallen a long time ago, but the Archdevils and Princes of Hell fight amongst themselves constantly, and being immortal, have no reason to rush their conquest of the world. Thus, while there is constant skirmishing going on, decades can pass before the next major attack.
- Though both the Sultanate and the Church will most likely happily agree they are on the same side of the war against hell, the forces of New Antioch, the Iron Sultanate, and assorted Trench Pilgrims will often fight amongst themselves over matters of honour, differing mission objectives, and battlefield spoils. The Iron Sultanate also hasn't forgotten that it was the Christians who caused this whole mess to begin with and tend to regard their counterparts with disdain, if not outright hostility.
- At least one major civil war allowed the demons a foothold — and what's worse, the civil war was over how many nails were used to crucify Jesus. All it accomplished was an eventual return to the status quo that cost far too many lives.
Weaponized Teleportation: Artillery Witches can summon an unlimited amount of infernal bombs via portals to Hell's Third Circle. Goetic Warlocks can use portals to move around the battlefield and drag enemies with them.
Weird Historical War: This setting began with the Crusades going to Hell (literally) with the summoning of demons to Earth, and the "current day" of the timeline is right when World War I began in the real world.
What Happened to the Mouse?: It's currently unclear how the rest of the world outside Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East has fared since the beginning of the Great War.
Wild Card: The Angel of Mercy, who is apparently beholden to no side and may not even be an Angel. Regardless of the side, anyone who cries out for release from their torment — be it grievous wounds or the suffering of such a Crapsack World — is attended to by the Angel, who gives them a swift and painless death.
Would Hurt a Child: Art for the Heretic Troopers shows one having a dead and desecrated baby hanging from their hip like a messed up trophy.
Wound That Will Not Heal: Heretic Anointed are permanently charred and blistered by their journey through the gates of Hell. Martyr-Penitents retain whatever injuries killed them after being resurrected; the constant pain is said to drive them to madness. The Stigmatic Nuns manifest the wounds of the Third Meta-Christ and continually bleed from them.
Written by the Winners: It's stated that the history given in the lore primer is biased and inaccurate, and players are encouraged to create similarly fanciful backstories for their warbands.
Wretched Hive: Ekron, the putrid city of Beelzebub located near the Gates of Hell in Jerusalem, raised from the rubble by the first Plague Knights and today a city built from insects, rotten flesh and plague. Ironically the city is filled with elements of art and worship such as statues, temples, mosques and more, used by Beelzebub to feed on the worship of said objects, with the lore indicating that, except for cultists and missionaries of the Grail, no mortal follower of Beelzebub, not even the heretical legions affiliated with Gluttony as well as the servants of the Court, are welcome there.
Zombie Apocalypse: The primary theme of the Cult of the Black Grail, which is all about spreading a horrific version of the Black Plague that either turns people into mindless Grail Thralls, or melts them down into a slurry of diseased biological matter that is used to create twisted, monstrous amalgamations.

Trench Crusade

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"Let the trumpets sound and let the banners unfurl, for it is in the violence of Tropes that salvation is gained:

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Tabletop Game / Trench Crusade 24 Following

"Let the trumpets sound and let the banners unfurl, for it is in the violence of Tropes that salvation is gained:

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Trench Crusade

24 Following