Cigar Funhouse

[Isabella Brown]

There is a darkness on the eastern front that does not behave like weather.

It is called the Gloom. It sits on the galactic map as a stain of sickly green, swallowing sectors whole, digesting planets into its expanding mass. The Terminids live inside it now—evolved, mutated, no longer the mindless bugs we spent two years farming for E-710. They have changed. The Gloom changed them. And we, who thought we understood this war, are learning that we understand nothing.

The keyword *Gloom* entered Helldivers 2 Items vocabulary quietly in 2025, with the Into the Unjust update . It was not a mechanic. It was a warning. The Terminids, previously confined to predictable breeding cycles and equally predictable eradication campaigns, had breached containment in a manner that suggested agency. They did not escape. They expanded. They consumed entire biomes and transformed them into Hive Worlds—cave systems the size of cities, acid lakes, spires of chitin that scraped the stratosphere .

We sent Helldivers into the Gloom. We called down stratagems through holes in the cave roofs. We navigated destructible walls with flashlights and democratic fury . We encountered Dragonroaches that circled from above, Rupture Spewers that burst from the ground to vomit corrosive pestilence, and Rupture Chargers that tunneled through rock to escape the light of Liberty .

We died. We always die. But the Gloom did not recede.

The other keyword, *Cyberstan*, is the western front's answer to the eastern abyss. It is not a biome. It is a homeworld—the mechanical heart of the Automaton Collective, liberated briefly and then lost again in the narrative ebb and flow of the Galactic War. The Battle for Cyberstan launched in February 2026 with the Machinery of Oppression update, sending Helldivers against Cyborgs, a new Automaton-adjacent enemy type designed to test the limits of our ammunition reserves and our faith in Managed Democracy .

The developers at Arrowhead do not know if we will win. They have said this explicitly. The outcome is not predetermined. We may take Cyberstan. We may fail. We may destroy the planet entirely—players have voted to do this before, and the Game Master honored their decision . This is not a story written in advance. It is a tabletop role-playing campaign with seven million participants, each carrying a 500kg bomb and a fragile sense of tactical coordination.

I have fought on both fronts. I have died in the Gloom's cave systems, my flashlight flickering as Dragonroach acid dissolved my armor. I have died on Cyberstan's factory floors, my body crushed beneath the treads of tanks copied from Super Earth designs and turned against their creators. I have died more times than the Ministry of Truth would ever declassify. I have respawned, rearmed, and been hellpodded back into the breach.

This is the structure of Helldivers 2. Not victory. Not survival. Presence. You are present for the battle. You contribute your liberation percentage, your war bonds medals, your requisition slips, your body. The Galactic War tracks your contribution. It forgets your name.

I think about the Gloom when I read patch notes about Chinese voiceovers and 6.0.1 updates and new Warbonds with cowboy hats . I think about it when I see the player count holding steady two years after launch, two hundred thousand concurrent souls screaming FOR DEMOCRACY into their headset microphones. I think about it when I remember that this game, this ridiculous satirical shooter about bugs and bots and explosive friendly fire, has sold twenty million copies and grossed seven billion dollars .

The Gloom does not care about sales figures. It does not care about TGA awards or community controversies or the PSN account debacle that briefly threatened to consume the player base . It simply expands. It digests. It waits for the next wave of Helldivers to drop through its cave roofs with flashlights and insufficient backup.

I will drop again tonight. I will select a Hive World mission, load my Autocannon, and call down my Patriot Exosuit . I will navigate the destructible walls, avoid the acid lakes, and destroy the Spore Lung that sustains the Gloom's infectious spread . I will die. My squad will reinforce me. I will die again.

This is not progress. This is not liberation. This is not the endgame the Galactic War map promises and the Major Orders demand.

This is simply the frontier. It expands. It contracts. It consumes.

The Gloom takes everything. It has taken two years of my life, measured in mission completions and liberation percentages and the accumulated weight of corpses left in alien caves. It has taken the innocence of the Helldivers who thought this war would be simple—shoot bugs, collect samples, upgrade ship, repeat.

But the Gloom has not taken Cyberstan. Not yet. The battle is ongoing. The outcome is undetermined. The Game Master is watching, sweating slightly, waiting to see what seven million Helldivers will do when faced with a homeworld and a deadline and the accumulated weight of two years of narrative investment.

I will be there. I am always there. The hellpod doors open. The planet rotates below. The mission timer begins.

For Super Earth. For Democracy. For the memory of every Helldiver who died in the Gloom and stayed dead.

We do not fight to win. We fight because the alternative is letting the darkness expand without resistance.

The Gloom takes everything. But it takes everything slowly. Slowly enough that we can drop again. Slowly enough that we can die again. Slowly enough that the Galactic War map can shift, pixel by pixel, toward liberation or defeat.

I drop. The cave swallows me. My flashlight cuts a narrow circle into the dark.

The Gloom does not blink. Neither do I.