John Hardstock

Sergeant **John "Clutch" Hardstock** is a member of the elite special operations team known as Kingship. A member of the MPS early on, he later enlisted for the Royal Marines and then tried out for the SAS Selection and was granted a spot in 1987. He was first sent on a mission to raid the main factory of a company in Yarmouth suspected of harboring Soviets and Nazis alike. It was a joint operation alongside the CIA.

Following the operation, he was sent to Ashkelon to secure the city following a terrorist incident during the Shevah Shavuot War.

## Biography

### Metropolitan Police

When Hardstock was 22, he joined the Metropolitan Special Constabulary. During the 1985 Finsbury Park incident, Hardstock was among the first responders. He was accompanied by Special Constables Merton Smith, Mark Hackney, Special Sergeant Kyle Hertford, and a Belgian Shepherd named Jake. After the terrorists took hostages and forcefully put explosive belts on them, the SAS were also deployed. Hardstock helped save many of the hostages. During the ordeal, Hackney was killed, and Jake was injured. Hardstock's next goal was to make it into the S.A.S.

### Royal Marines

Following the incident, in 1986, he enlisted for the Royal Marines. He passed training and was deployed in Ashkelon in order to stop a chemical weapons shipment to the splinter group of Fatah known as the Thawri. The mission was successful, and the ship carrying the equipment, known as the *Hadhsa*, was sunk.

### S.A.S

In 1987, Hardstock was granted the rank of Second Lieutenant. He finally was able to apply for the SAS in the winter. He passed. Most information pertaining to his training and selection is highly classified, and not even the Kingship Intelligence Department can find out anything about it. Various operations of his are described in various external sources.

On March 5th, 1988, during the Troubles and Operation *Bandana* commenced. The Special Air Service, alongside the Army Ranger Wing raided a Shopping Centre in Dundalk in order to assassinate the leader of the Republican Freedom Army, Finnian Ó Marcaigh. John Hardstock was accompanied by Kyle Hertford, who also made it into the SAS. During the altercation, Marcaigh was killed by Hardstock during the operation.

Six days after Operation Flavius, Hardstock was shipped to Lisburn alongside two other SAS operatives, under the alias Cillian Seward in order to spy on seven prominent members of the Continuity Irish Republican Army, including Gearóid Ó Doirnáin. Hardstock was able to breach Doirnáin's inner circle. After his cover was blown, he was forced to open fire on Doirnáin and three of the CIRA soldiers around him. Hardstock was able to escape the city and get back to England.

Hardstock was then assigned to Team Knight Two, a team composed of members of the SAS, SBS, and SIS. Hardstock's next known operation was during the Gulf War in 1991. He was sent to Khafji to work with a local resistance movement as part of Operation *Granby*. What happened during the operation is still unknown, however he survived and was relocated to operations in the Balkans.

During NATO's intervention in the Bosnian War, He successfully assassinated a prime general of the Army of Republika Srpska, and rescued hostages during a battle in Zenica. However, during an operation to eliminate a Srpska base in Kasapovići, Hardstock was injured.

During his recovery, Richard Baltimore himself visited Hardstock. He was then invited to join Kingship, and Hardstock accepted.

### Kingship

John "Clutch" Hardstock is going to be the main character of *Kingship: Black Winter*.

On the 16th of August in 1995, ex-Soviet agents, particularly from the Lithuanian SSR, had a base of operations set up in Dragør, Denmark. The soviets were planning to unleash a chemical agent codenamed by MI6 as Pompeii in the nearby capital of Copenhagen. In a joint operation with the Danish Security and Intelligence Service and the Jaeger Corps, the mission proved to be unsuccessful.