https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdank/comments/1vye0ei/probably_the_most_trench_crusade_lore_in_all_of/
During the Year of the Broken Trinity the Papal War Fleet was smashed along the coast of New Antioch by the newly created Demonic Submarines of Marbas. Pope Leo XIII himself was captured and forcefully dragged aboard the heretic submarine Livyatan alongside one of his communicant bodyguards. The Livyatan would then go missing, only spotted many years later when its wreckage washed up upon the Carcass Front.
One hulking figure would escape the dead wreck of the sub, clad in the stained yellow and blue of the Swiss Guard and bearing teeth stained red with holy blood, this was Leo XIII’s faithful bodyguard. The Pope had ordered his guard to devour him whole, so that he would be free from any torture and so that his body would be kept safe from the necromantic magics of heretic sorcerers.
The Communicant, now calling himself Never-Know, had gone insane from what he had done. The consciousness of the dead Pope now living inside his mind, Never-Know climbed atop an abandoned light-house and began his eternal vigil. Carrying a massive gun he had ripped from the carcass of the Livyatan, he stands watch over the corpses of all the ships that had been wrecked and washed ashore along the Carcass Front.
Trench Crusade is so great. The Vatican already has a programme to clone Christ and cannibalise him to become a really big swordsman, but eating the pope and wearing his clothes makes you god’s best sniper with the ghost pope as your spotter. All of this really happened.
Like with Warhammer 40k I’ll probably never play the tabletop version, but it takes everything I love about that canon and doubles down. It’s so overwhelmingly grimdark that it makes 40k look like a Teletubbies utopia. The way it treats the religious themes is especially great, and Goth Catholic WW1 is such a good aesthetic. I’m really excited to see where it’s at a decade from now. Even in its infancy it’s my favourite modern sci-fi canon.