The Grail

Large version concept of The Grail.

**The Grail** (**Грааль** in Russian) is a secret Soviet warping project that occurs in an alternate version of the Ghost Stories timeline. The purpose of the device was to mass-warp any person in a large radius around the device to various NATO cities around the world through the rift, which would create thousands of barbaric manmade Minutemen to wreak havoc on the other side. The device was built by the Dark Sword Research Group (DSRG) and the project was headed by Dr. Alexander Petrov.

## Design

### Appearance

The device's measurements place it at a large size of 24.5 meters tall with a base diameter of 5 meters. It branches into two counter-polarity antennae near the midsection of the device and must be securely fastened to the ground for functionality. The tower sits atop a revolving base which acts as a way of aligning the device optimally around the installed location, however this function becomes obsolete when the entire structure is fastened to the ground and unable to rotate.

### Power

The device is powered by a primary and auxiliary power arrangement. The main source of power which gives the device its warping ability is the processed Epochium core located in an underground chamber near the structure. In order to ensure core stability, an auxiliary power supply is used such as a nuclear reactor or coal power plant situated somewhere in the surrounding area. Disrupting the auxiliary power supply will destabilize the processed Epochium core and cause large scale destruction up to 4 km away from the device's location.

## History

### Cold War

During the Cold War, the DSRG played an important role in the research and development of a new form of combat called Dimensional Warfare. The execution of this type of combat was spearheaded by two researchers, Dr. Alexander Petrov and Jozef Kharov. Both men had completely different methods of approaching the problem of warping humans through the rift. Kharov wished to develop a suit that could be worn by Soviet troops before they warped to keep them safe during the jump so they would arrive unharmed out the other end of the rift. Dr. Petrov believed this idea was foolish and costly, as the Epochium they were able to acquire was in extremely low quantities and the suits would require a great deal of the material to produce.

Dr. Petrov opted for a different solution. He proposed using small quantities of Epochium dust in the form of injectable serum that could allow for the human body to keep itself safe through the rift. Unfortunately, many of the humans would emerge on the other side with heavy scarring, burn marks, and completely mind-gone. The failure of both researchers led them to follow more ambitious and extreme solutions in order to come out on top. Kharov took a small team of researchers to an island in the south pacific to investigate ancient structures that gave off interdimensional signatures, and Dr. Petrov took a team to a north-east radar base in the Soviet Union to further develop his formula.

### Events of Altered Timeline

The main timeline fractured into an alternate reality due to the damage being caused by The World Builder, and in this new version of history the US and USSR do not end the Cold War peacefully. Instead in 1986, full out nuclear war erupts between the two superpowers which causes massive loss of life all across the globe. It was during this time that Dr. Petrov switches strategies to come to the ultimate Mutually Assured Destruction scenario. He decides to force human beings through the rift in order to build an army of aggressive non-natural Minutemen who will cause mayhem due to their resilience against standard firearms. Realizing he needed all the state support for this final endeavor, he wrongly accuses his biggest opposer (Kharov) of conspiring with the west, setting him up for execution. Once Kharov's team was out of the way, Dr. Petrov received full resources to finish The Grail.

The device was set up outside of the town of Pripyat due to the pre-existing Chernobyl nuclear power plant infrastructure for the auxiliary power supply. The Soviets planned to kill two birds with one stone as the final push of the war made its way to the city of Pripyat. The Soviets planned on luring the US force into the city and have them occupy it while pulling their own forces out. Once the city was full of US troops, The Grail would be activated and would instantly warp all the citizens and US troops through the rift to cities in the west, turning their own soldiers against them.

The device was destroyed on October 1st, 1986 when the Sub-Continuum Force destabilized the primary power core and melted down the nuclear power plant themselves. It is believe that if the device had been used, the sheer number of people being warped through the rift would cause massive failure of the timeline which would have caused it to crumble out of existence.

## Trivia

* Dr. Petrov is much older than Kharov, and thus believes everything the younger scientist works on is naive and crude. This was Petrov's primary motivation for setting Kharov up.
* In the alternate timeline, the Chernobyl meltdown that would have occurred five months prior to the events of the Crankbait mission never happened which would suggest the fracture of the timeline occurred before 1986.