When scavengers of Evil Land crest a ridge or emerge from a fungal forest, there is one sight that makes even hardened warriors pause: the silhouette of an old tank, crawling across the wastes like a blackened beetle, tracks groaning, armor plates glowing faintly from furnace cores.
These are the Tanks of the Great Cataclysm—armored beasts born in a forgotten war of the ancient world, machines meant to break trenches and churn mud, now wandering or deployed in the deserts and ruins of Evil Land. Though rust-eaten and century-dead, they remain the most common heavy weapon still found in the wastes, their bones scattered across the land like fossils of war.
But why are they so common? The answer lies in the world’s collapse. When the Old World burned, it unleashed billions of machines into battle. Of these, WWI-era tanks—simple, rugged, and mechanically crude—proved more enduring than sleek engines of later wars. Their parts were easier to scavenge, their engines easier to jury-rig with fungus fuel, alcohol, or even coal. Where modern war machines required silicon brains and delicate alloys, these clanking monsters only needed steel, fire, and determination. In Evil Land, crudeness is immortality.
Origin: United Kingdom, 1916
Nickname in Evil Land: Ironworms
The first tanks ever unleashed, the Mark I and its successors litter Evil Land’s plains. Their rhomboid hulls, designed to cross trenches, now give them the ability to crawl across fissures, ruins, and fungal overgrowth with unsettling ease.
The Qin Dynasty salvages Mark Is in bulk, fielding them as troop carriers and siege platforms. They reforge their hulls with obsidian plating and mount alchemical flamethrowers in place of machine guns. To the Qin, these tanks are not machines—they are symbols of inevitability, rolling forward as embodiments of imperial order.
Capabilities: Slow, loud, and vulnerable to modern artillery—but in Evil Land, modern artillery is rare. Against tribes with spears, scavengers with rifles, or ash-ghouls with claws, these lumbering Ironworms are unstoppable walls of groaning metal.
Origin: France, 1917
Nickname in Evil Land: Toadlings
Small, nimble, and revolutionary in design, the Renault FT became the first tank with a rotating turret. Evil Land scavengers adore them because they are fixable with almost anything—wooden planks for tracks, fungal resin for seals, even scavenged bicycle parts.
The Dominion of Canada maintains entire battalions of FTs, retrofitted with frost-casters that spray liquid nitrogen in great arcs. Baron prefers them as drop-tanks, airlifting them aboard dirigibles and dropping them into hot zones. Dagoth cultists twist them further, welding dream-psalms into their armor and allowing ash-spirits to ride within their hulls, turning the crew into possessed zealots.
Capabilities: Fast for their size, turreted for flexible fire, but fragile. They are the “cavalry” of Evil Land—light, expendable, swarming. Where a Mark I breaks the wall, a swarm of FTs pours through.
Origin: Germany, 1918
Nickname in Evil Land: Iron Cathedrals
The German A7V, a massive box-shaped fortress on tracks, remains one of the most feared tanks in Evil Land. Larger than most ruins can accommodate, they crawl like mobile temples of war, bristling with guns on all sides. Only a handful were ever made in the Old World, but in Evil Land, their blueprints were rediscovered in databanks and spread across scavenger foundries.
House Dagoth has claimed several, refashioning them as moving shrines to Dagoth Ur, painted in ash sigils, their crews chanting endlessly as they fire. Qin employs them as command tanks, symbols of the Emperor’s might, leading entire columns into battle. Canada despises them but deploys them nonetheless, always wrapped in frozen armor to keep their overheating engines alive.
Capabilities: Heavily armed, bristling with machine guns, but prone to breakdowns and sluggish. In Evil Land, factions treat them as rolling thrones, centers of both terror and worship.
Origin: United Kingdom, 1917
Nickname in Evil Land: Hounds of Iron
The Whippet was designed as a fast support tank, and in Evil Land, it has become the weapon of scavengers, raiders, and tribes who cannot field larger machines. Often covered in spikes, bones, or scavenged relic-armor, Whippets serve as raider-chariots, dashing in to spray fire before vanishing into the dunes.
The Ashlanders of Evil Land favor them, riding atop their hulls like nomads on metal beasts. Megacorporations employ them as escort craft for caravans. Even common scavengers dream of owning a Whippet, for it is the perfect balance of terror and practicality.
Capabilities: Faster than most WWI tanks, lightly armored, with side-mounted guns. Easy to repair, easy to customize, endlessly reusable. Their commonness explains their prevalence: if there is a tank roaming Evil Land, there is a good chance it is a Whippet, painted in scavenger colors and leaking smoke like a wolf howling.
Simplicity. Unlike modern war machines, WWI tanks were made of steel, gears, and raw power. No computers, no AI cores, no delicate alloys—just slabs of iron that even the poorest tribe can hammer straight.
Mass Production of the Old World. When the Great Collapse came, stockpiles of old tanks were dumped into wastelands, left to rust in depots, or sealed in bunkers. Now they are unearthed daily by scavengers.
Adaptability. Evil Land thrives on improvisation. A Mark I runs on alcohol fuel. A Renault FT can mount scavenged cannons. An A7V can become a mobile shrine. Their mechanical simplicity makes them endlessly modifiable.
Cultural Symbolism. To the Qin, tanks are imperial tools of order. To Canada, they are frozen engines of honor. To Dagoth, they are dream-wombs of ash. To Baron, they are platforms of the sky war. For commoners, a tank is hope—proof that survival can ride on tracks.
The Qin Dynasty: Qin blacksmiths churn out near-endless Mark I and A7V replicas, bolted together in fungus-fueled forges. Their tanks march like extensions of the Emperor’s will.
Dominion of Canada: Dominion foundries in the frozen wastes mass-produce Renault FTs and Whippets, clad in steel cooled by endless blizzards.
House Dagoth: Rather than build, they resurrect. Ash priests chant over rusted husks, awakening them with sorcery until the tanks roll forward as living altars.
The Kingdom of Baron: Their airship factories specialize in light tanks, optimized for drop warfare. Baron favors Whippets and FTs, reforged in the sky for quick deployment.
Scavengers and Tribes: In hidden workshops, scavengers patch together tanks from wreckage, often creating grotesque hybrids. A Whippet with half of an A7V welded to its flank. A Renault FT with insectoid legs. These are freak-tanks, feared as much as they are mocked.
In Evil Land, where beasts howl and sorcerer-kings duel, where ruins hide Anunnaki relics and the Qin march endlessly, it is not strange that the tank has become a symbol of survival. What is strange is that these tanks, born in another world’s war, endure still.
They are more than machines. They are idols of violence. The ground shakes when they pass. Tribes scatter at the sound of their tracks. Children grow up with the silhouettes of Ironworms burned into their dreams.
And in the end, when all else falls to ash, fungus, and ruin, it will not be sleek machines of the stars that remain, but the old beasts of steel, crawling ever onward, coughing smoke into the poisoned air. Evil Land belongs to the tank, as much as it does to man, god, or monster.