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Some TMNT stuff really isn't for little kids. |
The Armageddon Game! is IDW Publishing's 2021 annual for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Solicit
For millennia, the Pantheon family have played a deadly chess game with humanity, willingly sacrificing innocent and guilty alike in their twisted pursuit of victory. But now, one member of the family sees the opportunity to end the eternal contest once and for all — a final, crushing triumph over his immortal siblings and all of human- and mutant-kind. The time has arrived for the Rat King to make his most chaotic and destructive moves yet. The time has come at last for… THE ARMAGEDDON GAME!
Appearing in Prelude to The Armageddon Game
Major characters
- Jagwar (flashback only)
- Manmoth (flashback only)
- Rat King
- Toad Baron (flashback only)
Minor characters
- Aka (flashback only)
- Alberto (flashback only)
- Alopex (flashback only)
- Anchovy (flashback only)
- Angel Bridge/Nobody (flashback only)
- April O'Neil (flashback only)
- Baxter Stockman
- Bebop (flashback only)
- Bludgeon (flashback only)
- Brooklyn S. Bridge (flashback only)
- Casey Jones (flashback only)
- Donatello (flashback only)
- Chi-You (flashback only)
- Dragon (flashback only)
- Elizabeth O'Neil (flashback only)
- Fight'n Ferguson (flashback only)
- Franz (flashback only)
- Fugitoid (flashback only)
- Gothano (flashback only)
- Guardians of the Forest (debut) (flashback only)
- Harold Lilja (flashback only)
- Herman (flashback only)
- Hun (flashback only)
- Jennika (flashback only)
- John O'Neil (flashback only)
- Kara Lewis (flashback only)
- Kid Kennedy (flashback only)
- Kitsune (flashback only)
- Koya (flashback only)
- Krang/Leatherhead
- Krisa
- Libby Meitner (flashback only)
- Lindsey Baker (flashback only)
- Rocksteady (flashback only)
- Man Ray (flashback only)
- Michelangelo (flashback only)
- Mondo Gecko (flashback only)
- Natsu (flashback only)
- Null
- Old Hob (flashback only)
- Oroku Karai (flashback only)
- Pepperoni (flashback only)
- Pete (flashback only)
- Sally Pride (flashback only)
- Seymour Gutz (flashback only)
- Shredder (flashback only)
- Slash (flashback only)
- Splinter (flashback only)
- Steve (debut) (flashback only)
- Tang Shen (flashback only)
- Woody Dirkins (flashback only)
- Zodi
Species
- Anthropomorphic frogs
- Anthropomorphic jaguar
- Anthropomorphic mammoth
- Anthropomorphic toad
- Demons
- Dragon
- Humans
- Mutant alligator
- Mutant arctic fox
- Mutant cat
- Mutant falcon
- Mutant gecko
- Mutant hammerhead shark
- Mutant hermit crab
- Mutant manta ray
- Mutant pigeon
- Mutant raptor
- Mutant rhinoceros
- Mutant scorpion
- Mutant snake
- Mutant turtles
- Mutant warthog
- Rats
- Mutant rat
- Robot
- Protoceratops
- Utrom
- Wolves
Locations
Synopsis
The Rat King holds council with someone, introducing himself and through a series of flashbacks, his family as well as adversaries and predicament.
Rat King details every defeat and setback that has had led him to realize that his family's "game" has become stale and no longer a valid pasttime. He tells of his visits to his family that further pushed him to this mindset with every encounter.
In the Amazon rainforest, Rat King goes to see Jagwar, who is now busting loggers alongside a group of indigenous people calling themselves the Guardians of the Forest. Jagwar has grown tired of fighting for scraps of the world that have become displeasurable to her, and believes to have found her calling in staying the hand of capitalism from infecting the natural world. Rat King watches Jagwar and her Guardians slaughter the loggers, then spirits himself away through a Thin place to his next destination.
At the Den of Delights, a two-faced head being used as a ball hurtles toward Rat King and he catches it. The ball pleads to be thrown back toward the playfield, but Rat King punts it into the lake. Toad Baron gets aggitated that his brother has interrupted their game of Noggin Knockers and has Alberto fish the "ball" from the water. Rat King attempts to persuade him to join their game again, but the Baron has no wish for it any longer, as the attacks from Angel, Alopex, and the Turtles have proven too much for him. Rat King watches a bit of the game as Alberto returns with the head, but then leaves to find Manmoth.
In Siberia, Manmoth battles a pair of wolves and slaughters them. Rat King congratulates him, but Manmoth protests that the battle would not have been in his favor if not for percision and luck on his side. Rat King attempts to curry his favor in the fight against the Turtles, but having fought them once before in his own domain and outwitted by them, he proclaims that they are not helpless or pawns as Rat King and Kitsune have been seeing them as, but survivors.
His final sibling to visit is Gothano in the Pacific Northwest, whose reply to his request is a simple curt "No."
Rat King sums up that his perspective has changed by his first three siblings for his audience: from Jagwar, he realized that his family's "game" no longer had any real stakes, and any game worth playing would surely have them. Toad Baron made him realize that chaos for the sake of chaos is useless, and that it has to be means to an end to worth something. And from the battle he'd witnessed from Manmoth, who carried off his opponents like trophies to skin and gut, there needs to be a goal, something for the winner to take away from the end of the game, and to not underestimate any opponent. This game he and his siblings had played for millennia was essentially just about playing and not about winning, not about gaining anything.
Thus, Rat King has called on three individuals who very much would stand to gain from a new kind of game - Krang, Stockman, and Null, and he invites them to participate in a challenge that could net them everything they want, including finally ridding them of the Turtles. Krang says he'll join any "team" in order to get out of the "oversized lizard", Baxter agrees so long as he gets to set his own terms, and Null tells him that she'll only "play" if the Earth is only the beginning. This all excites the Rat King very much, and he proclaims an end to the "Pantheon Game", and a beginning to the "Armageddon Game".