The organization calling itself
Operation CWAL remains in theory what it was when the first story was posted on the
battle.net forums all of three years ago- a number of authors writing stories that star the members of a
paramilitary organization, the nature of which range from chainsaw-wielding
beavers to individuals who have a talent for reappearing unharmed whenever they are killed (and usually die often, in a messy fashion, at the hands of their peers), also known as
cannon fodder, to
mages with pyromanic tendancies, to... well, you get the idea. Since the arrival of
Brood War to shelves, CWAL has drifted from its origins to becoming a sort of shared universe that has drifted possession through almost a hundred hands in its lifespan.
CWAL operates out of a
reconstructed Starbucks coffee house in
Irvine, California, which is convienient because almost every CWALer is addicted to some form of
caffiene, a direct result of their playing
Starcraft,
Half-Life,
Diablo II, and other computer games, and because
Blizzard is just a block away so it's rather easy to launch attacks. However, when evil calls, CWAL is usually the organization that gets involved in resisting its advance, whether the source of the darkness be a
megalomaniacal software company, an evil
demigod seeking full deific status, or a shipment of
Mountain Dew run three days late.
Of course, with as many people wielding enough firepower to supply a
Third World nation gathered in one place as there is in CWAL, they manage to cause havoc on their own. The mere presence of Emperor
Maggott is headache enough, but when all of CWAL is considered as a whole, it's easy to see why
real estate agents make a killing selling cheap apartments and houses to unsuspecting couples.
Those
characters new to CWAL are often shoved down into the admittedly very large basement called the
Newbie Dungeon, home of the Newbie Patrol
NP, where they get to serve the vets (aka any CWALer who is not a
Newbie) as well as be generally harassed by them.
CARV was formed before the Newbie Patrol by a number of new CWALers who were feeling
dissatisfied with their
newbie status left CWAL and turned their characters into mercenaries working out of the abandoned
OEEP headquarters.
OEEP is one of CWAL's more recent
rivals- while numerically smaller than CWAL itself,
OEEP has a
certain goal that they will stop at nothing to achieve- and what else would that goal be but world domination?
As with any writing, a number of
independant evils lurk about, pursuing their own
agendas that usually are directly opposed to CWAL's stated goals of drinking coffee and playing
Starcraft.