Operation Black Signal: A Deadwake Universe Source-Book (Deadwake Gaming Universe)

THE STATIC IS SPEAKING. WHO IS LISTENING?

A rogue transmission has bled through the Cognitive Static: a broken voice, humming a song no one can place. To the corporate logicians of CAD, it is a weapon waiting to be harnessed. To the zealots of the Choir, it is the hymn of a new god. To the Null Guard, it is a memetic plague that must be erased. Every faction is certain. Every faction is wrong. And every faction is right, because the Signal has no fixed meaning. It becomes whatever the people fighting over it decide to make it.

Operation Black Signal is a complete, hybrid campaign sourcebook for the Deadwake universe, built to run as seamlessly at the tabletop as it does on the miniatures board. Across three acts and a branching Signal Evolution Track, your table's choices don't just move a plot forward. They determine what the Black Signal is, and that decision reshapes every scene, every battle, and every ending that follows.

WHAT'S INSIDE

• A full three-act campaign, from the first intercepted fragment through the escalating Echo Storm to the final convergence at the Relay Crown.
• The Signal Evolution Track: a living, three-state meta-mechanic where every mission and skirmish pushes the Signal toward DATA, HYMN, or SILENCE, and the dominant state rewrites the battlefield itself with new environmental effects, hazards, and enemy behavior.
• Three distinct, campaign-altering endings, Weaponized, Silenced, and Answered, each with its own epilogue, faction fallout, and lasting consequences for your Deadwake setting.
• Complete tabletop unit profiles and Requisition Values for every faction the campaign puts you against, including the Choir of the Cascade, the Null Guard, the Wayfinders' Charter, and the Entity's constructs, so the whole campaign is playable with nothing more than this book and the core Deadwake rules.
• The Echoing Corridor, a twelve-relay campaign map and strategic engine with its own between-session procedures, so the war over the Signal has real geography, real stakes, and real consequences for the choices your table doesn't make as much as the ones it does.
• A full toolbox for running the campaign your way: hybrid play, pure roleplaying with miniatures battles abstracted into skill challenges, pure skirmish play for tables who want tactics without talk, and solo play rules throughout every scenario.
• New battlefield rules for a Signal-warped world, including psychic storms, conceptual voids, hazardous relays, and reality-bending Signal Surge events that can turn a stable firefight into chaos in a single round.

WHO THIS IS FOR

Operation Black Signal is designed for groups who want their tactical battles and their roleplaying to be the same story, not two separate hobbies sharing a table. It rewards tables who pay attention, who argue about what the Signal means, and who are willing to live with the consequences of deciding. Facilitators new to Deadwake will find everything they need to run the full campaign; veterans of the setting will find a story built to bend around whatever their table brings to it.

Requires the Deadwake Roleplaying Rules and Miniatures Rules to play. Scales from small crews to large parties, and from a single solo player to a full table.

The Signal has no meaning until you give it one. Is it a weapon to be wielded, a god to be worshipped, or a plague to be erased?

THE CHOICE IS YOURS.