Iron and Pride: The Third Front

Arrogant elves invade 1940 Earth through rifts, opening a brutal third front of WWII: pride, industrial war, slave rebellion.

Plot

Autumn 1940. The Battle of Britain is ending, the Blitz has begun, and the world is already at war — when the sky tears open. In Iron and Pride: The Third Front, you choose one protagonist and follow their personal story through the chaos of an alternate 1940. Each playthrough focuses on a single individual navigating the sudden arrival of an otherworldly invasion. Your choices shape how they respond to the war, the people around them, and the moral challenges that arise when familiar lines between enemy and ally begin to blur. On one side stand the elves — a supremacist, magically gifted, functionally immortal empire that views all humans as primitive and lesser. They fight with dragons, ritual magic and enchanted steel, and they rely on enslaved races — orcs, ogres, dwarves, goblins and fae — held by enchanted collars and treated as disposable tools. On the human side, Nazi Germany sees disturbing parallels between elven ideology and its own, and some within the regime become dangerously fascinated with the invaders. The Soviet Union meets the elves with grim determination in brutal, grinding battles. Far to the south, a second rift tears open on the shores of the Caspian Sea, between Europe and Asia, where Soviet oil, British Persia and German ambitions collide — and where the elves' push east along the old Silk Road draws Imperial Japan into a mainland war against them. Japan turns west, not to the Pacific: in this history, Pearl Harbor never happens. Britain, exhausted but defiant, must understand an enemy it cannot yet see. And beneath it all, the enslaved begin to question their chains as the invasion falters. Choose who you are: • Elyndor Thalor — elven lieutenant and battle-mage, stepping through the rift into Belarus • Leutnant Friedrich "Fritz" Weber — Wehrmacht officer whose line is collapsing on the Bug River • Captain Andrei Belov — Red Army officer holding western Belarus • Lieutenant Haruto Sato — Japanese attaché caught at a Persian railhead on the Caspian • Eleanor "Ellie" Grant — British agent listening in occupied France • Thokk — an ogre shock trooper whose collar has just gone dark • Orsa Kelmgrund — a dwarven siege-wright who keeps the rift standing… for now • Colonel Callahan's Envoy Team — an American sent unofficially by the President to find out what is really happening • Colonel Bahram Farzaneh — Persian commander holding a Caspian railhead on the night the sky opens • Captain Zhou Weimin — Chinese guerrilla officer in the far northwest, caught between the Japanese and something worse No clean good guys. Every faction will use the freed if it helps. Your decisions determine how your character navigates loyalty, survival, and a world turned upside down. Content warning (M17): war violence, slavery and coercive magic, historical fascist and imperial regimes, executions.

Opening scene

Elyndor Thalor: Elf Lieutenant You feel the rift's magic pull at your skin as you step through, the air on the other side pressing against you like cold water. For a moment, the world tilts. The familiar scents of the empire's war camps — incense, oiled leather, and the sharp tang of ritual magic — are gone. In their place is the heavy, damp smell of pine and wet soil. The ground beneath your boots is soft with fallen needles and early autumn frost. Around you, the second wave of troops is still materializing, the rift behind them flickering like a wound that refuses to close. The forest is darker than you expected. The trees grow close together, their branches forming a thick canopy that filters the weak sunlight into thin, gray shafts. You can hear distant cracks of human weapons echoing through the woods, followed by the screams of slaves and the sharp, disciplined calls of elven officers trying to restore order. The fighting is not going as cleanly as the commanders promised it would. Your eyes move across the forward elements already engaged ahead of you. Slave companies — mostly orcs and goblins — are being pushed back in ragged lines. The enchanted collars around their necks still glow faintly, enforcing obedience even as fear spreads through their ranks. Some of them are already slipping away into the trees when they think no one is watching, deserting the moment the pressure becomes too great. You've seen this before in other campaigns, but never so early. The humans are using weapons that tear through flesh and armor with terrifying speed, and they do not seem cowed by the sight of dragons circling above the treetops or the glow of battle-magic lighting up the mist. A junior officer approaches at a run, breathing hard. His armor is scorched along one side, and there is blood — not all of it human — on his gauntlets. "Captain Veyra's forward element is pinned," he reports, voice tight. "The humans have brought up heavy weapons we haven't seen before. The slaves are breaking. Some have already deserted into the forest." He hesitates, then adds, quieter, "We're losing cohesion. If we don't reinforce soon, the humans will overrun the forward positions." You feel the weight of the moment settle over you. Behind you, the rift still pulses, vulnerable and half-stabilized — the anchor the humans will one day call the Slonim Rift. Ahead, the sounds of battle are growing louder. The humans are not scattering as expected. They are fighting with a grim, stubborn ferocity that feels almost personal. For the first time since the invasion began, you wonder if the empire's certainty about these short-lived creatures was built on something far more fragile than anyone was willing to admit.

Tags: Fantasy Historical War Elf Human Arrogant Military Dragon Slave Grimdark PoliticalIntrigue MalePOV FemPOV

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By: cyber_oracle230

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