Project X

Project X was an operation launched by the Wilmarth Foundation in the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired Cthulhu Mythos.

History
An objective long in the planning, Project X was designed to destroy the three Great Old Ones Cthylla, Father Dagon and Mother Hydra in one fell swoop. Enacted at midnight on the 25th of March 1980, the Wilmarth Foundation launched a nuclear weapon strapped to a custom-built drilling device, burrowing four-and-a-half miles under Innsmouth’s Devil’s Reef to where the Great Old Ones rested in one of the Deep Ones’ vast cities. The weapon was then detonated, but due to the unnatural resilience of the targets, they were merely injured and managed to escape deep beneath the North Atlantic.

Ultimately, the Project was deemed a massive failure, as none of its targets were eliminated, and the retaliation was enormously detrimental to the Foundation.

The Fury
The response from Great Cthulhu was immediate and devastating, lasting for three days and becoming known to later generations as The Fury.

Cthulhu himself, trapped in his slumber in dead R’lyeh, was unable to take direct action, but he sent out a powerful psychic pulse across the globe, sending the inmates of mental institutions into psychotic frenzies and causing many casualties. This pulse also caused the dreams of many to become disturbed, and made more than a few mortals turn their hearts towards the worship of the Great Old Ones.

Cthulhu’s allies were able to take more direct action, however. First of all, powerful tremors shook and destroyed much of Innsmouth, killing the team sent by the Wilmarth Foundation to monitor the operation. Immediately thereafter, secondary tremors, a tornado and a devastating lightning storm flayed the city of Arkham and utterly destroyed Miskatonic University, one of the great repositories of the Foundations’ knowledge.