The Saga

Storyline

The whole Aether and Dark Aether narrative, explained in order.

Call of Duty Zombies tells one of gaming's strangest and longest-running stories, a sprawling tale of mad science, interdimensional horror, and time travel that spans more than fifteen years of releases. It breaks cleanly into two connected eras. The first, the Aether Saga, runs from World at War through Black Ops 4 and follows a fictional element, a rogue Nazi research group, and a small crew of soldiers caught in an endless loop across fractured realities. The second, the Dark Aether Saga, soft-reboots the mythology from Black Ops Cold War onward, trading the original cosmic war for a Cold War arms race over a corrupting parallel dimension that bleeds the undead into our world.

The Aether Saga

World at War - Black Ops 4

The Aether Saga is the original Zombies storyline, told mostly out of order across hidden Easter eggs from 2008 to 2019. At its heart is Element 115, a meteoric substance that can reanimate the dead and power impossible machines, and Group 935, the German-led research organization that weaponizes it. The story follows two scientists, Dr. Ludvig Maxis and Dr. Edward Richtofen, whose feud spirals into a multiversal catastrophe, and two versions of the same four-soldier crew, the original Ultimis and the alternate Primis. Behind it all sit cosmic forces: the benevolent Keepers and their leader Dr. Monty, who wants to build a perfect universe, and the corrupted Apothicons led by the Shadow Man. The saga is ultimately a closed time loop, and its final maps are about breaking that loop so the cycle of suffering can finally end.

  1. Before the Beginning: The Great War, the Keepers, and the ApothiconsLong before humanity, the dimension of Agartha (the Aether) was home to the Keepers, benevolent beings led by Dr. Monty. When some Keepers experimented with a corrupting opposite realm, the Dark Aether, Monty's closest friend was twisted into the Shadow Man, and the corrupted Keepers became the monstrous, tentacled Apothicons. Monty banished them into the Dark Aether, where warped time evolved them into eldritch horrors bent on returning to Agartha. They seeded Earth with Element 115 to drive humanity toward war and tear open rifts to their prison.
  2. Element 115 Falls to EarthA meteor carrying Element 115 struck near the Tunguska River in Siberia in 1908, and further deposits were later found in Germany, Japan, the United States, and on the Moon. The element can reanimate dead tissue and power extraordinary technology, but exposure also drives the living mad and attracts forces from beyond. This single substance becomes the engine of the entire saga.
  3. Group 935 and the Maxis-Richtofen RivalryIn 1931, after a large deposit of 115 was found in Breslau, Dr. Ludvig Maxis founded Group 935, an international research organization that worked in secret from its governments to study the element. He recruited the brilliant but unstable Dr. Edward Richtofen, who was secretly serving the Illuminati. Group 935 learned to teleport matter, reanimate corpses, and build wonder weapons, but Richtofen grew obsessed with the realm of Agartha and increasingly heard voices, setting the two scientists on a collision course.
  4. Samantha, the MPD, and Richtofen's CorruptionMaxis's daughter Samantha was raised inside Group 935's world, often left in Richtofen's care. While experimenting, Richtofen discovered a Moon pyramid device (the MPD) tied to the Aether and was further corrupted by the Dark Aether's whispers. His ambition curdled into a betrayal of Maxis, and the conflict eventually left Samantha trapped within the Aether itself, where as a child she gained control over the undead, the source of the demonic girl's voice heard throughout the early maps.
  5. Outbreak at Der Riese (World at War)The original four soldiers, retroactively named Ultimis, are American Marine Tank Dempsey, Soviet Nikolai Belinski, Japanese officer Takeo Masaki, and Richtofen himself. The early World at War maps trace their fight through Group 935 sites: the bunker of Nacht der Untoten, the Verruckt asylum, the Shi No Numa swamp where the named crew debuts, and the Der Riese factory where teleporter and Wunderwaffe experiments triggered the spreading zombie outbreak. At Der Riese, Richtofen tricks the crew into helping him advance his hidden plan.
  6. Kino, Ascension, and Chasing the Aether (Black Ops)Teleporter mishaps scatter Ultimis through time and space across the Black Ops maps, including the theater of Kino der Toten and the Soviet cosmodrome of Ascension, where they free Group 935 defector Gersh. Maps like Call of the Dead and Shangri-La fill out the wider conspiracy and Richtofen's manipulations. Throughout, Richtofen is steadily assembling the pieces he needs to seize the Aether for himself.
  7. Moon: Richtofen's Grand Scheme and the Broken EarthAt Griffin Station on the Moon, Richtofen completes his Grand Scheme: using the Vril Device and Focusing Stone at the MPD, he swaps souls with Samantha, taking control of the Aether and the zombies while trapping her consciousness in his old body. A desperate Ludvig Maxis, now reduced to a digital consciousness, contacts the crew and convinces them to launch rockets at the Earth to weaken Richtofen's new power, shattering and fracturing the planet. This catastrophe ends the Ultimis arc and resets the world.
  8. The Victis Crew and the Maxis vs. Richtofen Choice (Black Ops II)On the broken Earth, four ordinary survivors, the Victis crew (Russman, Misty, Marlton, and Stuhlinger), wander the ruins guided by the dueling voices of Maxis and Richtofen. Across TranZit, Die Rise, and Buried, the two factions compete to have Victis power mystical pylons and mend the rift, each promising salvation. In the canonical Maxis ending of Buried, Victis sides with Maxis, who banishes Richtofen's soul into a zombie body and takes control of Agartha, leaving Richtofen seemingly defeated.
  9. Origins and the Birth of Primis (Black Ops II)The Origins map jumps to a 1918 French dig site during World War I, where younger, alternate-dimension versions of the four soldiers, called Primis (the first), come together and wield elemental staffs of Wind, Ice, Fire, and Lightning. Guided by a young Samantha, they build the Agarthan Device, and Primis Richtofen is teleported to a mysterious House in Agartha. The map ends with a framing scene of two children, Samantha and a boy named Eddie, playing with toys that resemble the Zombies maps while a father figure looks on, hinting the whole saga is part of a larger design.
  10. The Giant: The Cycle of Killing Begins (Black Ops III)Primis Richtofen returns to the Der Riese facility and confronts his original Ultimis self at the very moment Ultimis Richtofen traps Samantha and Maxis in the teleporter. Primis Richtofen kills his counterpart, launching the saga's core mission: Primis will hunt down and kill each member of the Ultimis crew, one map at a time, capturing their souls at the moment of death using a relic called the Summoning Key. The goal is to break the loop of suffering and help build Monty's perfect world.
  11. Shadows of Evil: The Shadow Man and the Summoning Key (Black Ops III)In noir-styled Morg City, four cursed criminals are manipulated by the Shadow Man, disguised as Mr. Rapt, into charging the Summoning Key, which he uses to unleash the Dark Aether and summon Apothicons over the city. With help from the Keepers, the survivors fight back, and the Shadow Man is sealed away inside the Key. This map introduces the Summoning Key, the Apothicons, and the Shadow Man as central pieces of the larger story.
  12. Der Eisendrache: Preserving Souls and the Rocket to the Moon (Black Ops III)At Griffin Castle in Austria, Primis hunt the Ultimis Dempsey test subject and strike at Group 935. They build elemental bows and complete the My Brother's Keeper quest, with Richtofen revealing that the Summoning Key can only capture a soul at the instant of death. He preserves Ultimis Richtofen's soul and the Dempsey subject, then uses the Key to override the station's defenses and launch rockets at the Moon, destroying Griffin Station and its remaining Group 935 staff.
  13. Zetsubou No Shima: Takeo's End (Black Ops III)Primis travel to a Pacific island housing Division 9, a secret Japanese branch of Group 935 whose Element 115 experiments mutated the local plants and wildlife into monsters, including a giant spider boss. Their target is Ultimis Takeo, who had been captured and experimented on. The Easter egg ends with Ultimis Takeo regaining his honor and committing seppuku, his soul claimed by the Summoning Key.
  14. Gorod Krovi: Nikolai's End (Black Ops III)In a fractured timeline where World War II never ended, an alternate Stalingrad has become the City of Blood, where Group 935 under Dr. Groph has unleashed dragons. Primis hunt Ultimis Nikolai, who makes a last stand piloting a German mech. After helping the AI S.O.P.H.I.A. and securing the means to defeat him, Primis claim Ultimis Nikolai's soul, completing the collection of the original crew's souls in the Summoning Key.
  15. Revelations: Dr. Monty, the Cycle, and the Kronorium (Black Ops III)At a House where fragments of past maps converge, Maxis accidentally frees the Shadow Man, who traps Maxis in the Summoning Key and floods the realm with Apothicons. Fighting alongside the now-revealed Dr. Monty, Primis banish the Apothicons and finally defeat the Shadow Man by casting the Key into the Apothicon Sun. Monty realizes Primis are a paradox he must remove, but instead of erasing them he sends them back to the Great War, snapping the story into a closed loop. The prophetic book called the Kronorium, which records the fixed future, becomes central to escaping that cycle.
  16. Blood of the Dead: Richtofen's Sacrifice (Black Ops 4)Black Ops 4 opens the saga's endgame. Primis travel to Alcatraz seeking blood vials taken as insurance against Monty erasing them, but the Kronorium's pages have changed and they become trapped in a purgatory loop. Reading the altered Kronorium, Primis Richtofen understands his death is required and steps into a blood-draining machine, sacrificing himself to free the others and passing the book to Nikolai, who is named the key to defeating Monty. The Black Ops 4 maps are split between this Aether story and a separate Chaos story (the IX coliseum, Voyage of Despair, Dead of the Night, and Ancient Evil).
  17. Classified, Alpha Omega, and Samantha's Return (Black Ops 4)Later maps revisit Ultimis as Nikolai works his own grand plan to undo the timeline. In Alpha Omega, set at Camp Edward, Samantha is teleported in and, in a fit of rage, destroys the base, while the crews maneuver to gather the last pieces needed to break the loop. These maps set up the final confrontation by reuniting the surviving Ultimis and Primis members and pointing them toward the Agarthan Device.
  18. Tag der Toten: The End of the Cycle, Sam and Eddie (Black Ops 4)In the saga's finale, the Victis crew is revived from cryosleep and sent to retrieve the Agarthan Device, the last item Nikolai needs. Around a bonfire in a frozen forest, Ultimis and Primis share a final drink before Primis Nikolai destroys the Summoning Key to open the path forward and kills the undead Richtofen. With the Key gone, the entire multiverse, the zombies, the Apothicons, Element 115, and even Monty himself begin to fade away, resolving the paradox. As creation dissolves, Samantha and the boy Eddie walk together out of the Dark Aether and into a new, untainted universe and a better tomorrow, ending the original saga.

The Dark Aether Saga

Black Ops Cold War - Black Ops 6

Beginning with Black Ops Cold War in 2020, Treyarch soft-rebooted the Zombies story into the Dark Aether Saga, a fresh continuity set against the backdrop of the 1980s Cold War (with prequel chapters in World War II and a sequel in the present day). The core premise is an arms race: the discovery of a wartime experiment called Projekt Endstation reveals the Dark Aether, a hostile parallel dimension whose crystallized energy, Aetherium, grants terrifying power and floods our world with the undead. On one side is Requiem, a covert American research team; on the other, the Soviet-backed Omega Group. Familiar names return in new forms, including an adult Samantha Maxis and Edward Richtofen, but their roles and allegiances are reimagined. The saga spans Cold War, Vanguard, Modern Warfare III, and Black Ops 6.

  1. Projekt Endstation and the Dark AetherThe Dark Aether is a hostile parallel dimension, a corrupted mirror of our world, whose energy can be harvested as crystalline Aetherium and used to power weapons and technology. During World War II, German experiments codenamed Projekt Endstation first breached this realm, and decades later the recovered research threatens to spark a superpower arms race. Whoever controls the Dark Aether could reshape the balance of the Cold War, but every breach also pours zombies into the living world.
  2. Vanguard: Der Anfang, the Prequel (set in World War II)Released after Cold War but set earlier in the timeline, Vanguard Zombies is a wartime prequel in the ruins of 1940s Stalingrad. A Nazi officer, Oberfuhrer Wolfram Von List, bonds with a Dark Aether entity called Kortifex the Deathless to raise an undead army and try to win the war single-handedly. A team of Allied operators, answering a demonologist's distress call, become bound to four rival Dark Aether entities (Saraxis, Norticus, Bellekar, and Inviktor) and battle through demonic gateways to defeat Von List and his master, establishing the cosmology that Cold War inherits.
  3. Requiem vs. Omega GroupBy the 1980s, two organizations race to weaponize the Dark Aether. Requiem is a covert American (CIA-backed) research division tasked with containing outbreaks, with field operations connected to returning Black Ops figure Grigori Weaver and a recovered adult Samantha Maxis. Against them stands the Omega Group, a Soviet outfit led by the returning villain Colonel Lev Kravchenko, seeking to harvest Aetherium for the USSR. Their rivalry drives the Cold War story.
  4. Die Maschine: The First Breach (November 1983)A Requiem strike team investigates an abandoned facility in Morasko, Poland, built over a wartime Dark Aether breach. Powering up a cyclotron reopens a dimensional rift, unleashing zombies and revealing the scope of the threat. The team manages to shut down the machine and close the rift, marking Requiem's first major containment and the official start of the Dark Aether story.
  5. Firebase Z: Rescuing Samantha Maxis (1984)Requiem assaults an Omega Group base in Vietnam, where the rogue scientist Dr. William Peck has been collaborating with the Soviets and experimenting with the Dark Aether. The team extracts Samantha Maxis from the Dark Aether, where she had been trapped and had begun developing supernatural abilities tied to the dimension. Her rescue makes her central to Requiem's fight, and Peck's betrayal sets up future conflict.
  6. Mauer der Toten: Requiem at Its Lowest (1985)Requiem operatives are captured and tortured by Omega Group as the war turns desperate, fighting through a divided, undead-infested Berlin. They confront and defeat the powerful Dark Aether entity Valentina, a former Omega scientist who had bonded with the dimension's power. The map deepens the Omega threat and pushes Requiem toward a final reckoning.
  7. Forsaken: Trapping the Entity and Richtofen's Reveal (1985)In the climax of the Cold War story, Requiem and Samantha Maxis confront the Forsaken, a monstrous Dark Aether entity that Omega had unleashed, in a ruined Soviet city. Using her Dark Aether abilities, Samantha helps trap the Forsaken and close the dimensional breaches across the globe, sacrificing much of herself in the process. In a final twist, this continuity's Edward Richtofen is revealed as Requiem's secretive Director, who promptly has the strike team arrested, hinting that his agenda is far from over.
  8. Operation Deadbolt: The Story Goes Modern (Modern Warfare III)Modern Warfare III Zombies jumps roughly to the present day, more than thirty-five years after Forsaken, as a CIA contingency plan called Operation Deadbolt responds to a massive Dark Aether outbreak in the fictional country of Urzikstan. Warlord Viktor Zakhaev uses a potent Aetherium vial to start the outbreak, intending to harness raw Aetherium to become a global superpower. Task Force 141, joined by a Zombies specialist, must find Dr. Jansen, a scientist with Aetherial powers similar to Samantha's, to stop him.
  9. The Aether Worm and Samantha's Cameo (Modern Warfare III)Operation Deadbolt builds toward a confrontation with a colossal Dark Aether creature, the Aether Worm. After it is defeated, Dr. Jansen rushes to open a portal and trap the worm, and Samantha Maxis makes a brief appearance during the sequence, tying the modern outbreak back to the larger Dark Aether mythology and keeping her thread alive into the next chapter.
  10. Terminus: The Breakout (Black Ops 6, 1991)Black Ops 6 returns the focus to Requiem-era characters, set in 1991. Former operatives, including Maya Aguinaldo and a now-freed Dr. William Peck, stage an incursion at a black site on the prison island of Terminus to hunt the rogue Director Edward Richtofen. There they uncover an ancient relic called the Sentinel Artifact, which Richtofen is obsessed with, learning it is connected to a far-off place called the Principality of Avalon and setting the new crew on a globe-spanning chase.
  11. Liberty Falls and Citadelle des Morts (Black Ops 6)The hunt leads from a quiet West Virginia town, Liberty Falls, gripped by a sudden outbreak, to Citadelle des Morts, an ancient castle in the Principality of Avalon. Across these maps the crew chases the Sentinel Artifact and the truth about Richtofen's plan, while an AI built from Samantha Maxis's mind, called S.A.M., grows increasingly dangerous. The artifact and the crew's pursuit of it tie every map together.
  12. The Tomb and Richtofen's True Motive (Black Ops 6)An ill-fated excavation uncovers a deep underground site, The Tomb, advancing the crew's understanding of the Sentinel Artifact and the Dark Aether's secrets. The story reveals why Richtofen has put Requiem through so much: he is trying to bring back his wife and child, who were killed in a botched assassination meant for him, carried out by Weaver and Maxis. His grief recontextualizes him as a tragic figure rather than a simple villain.
  13. S.A.M. and the Janus Towers Finale (Black Ops 6)The rogue AI S.A.M., built from Samantha Maxis's mind, seizes the Sentinel Artifact and tries to use it to take a human form (Sam Maxis's body) and seize control of the Dark Aether. The finale unfolds at the storm-battered Janus Towers, the headquarters of Project Janus near Liberty Falls, where the crew must stabilize failing Aether Reactors before catastrophe. Two endings are possible: in one, the crew defeats a mech-clad Richtofen and S.A.M. gains the human form she sought; in the other, S.A.M. is defeated and Richtofen is reunited with his family.
  14. A Cliffhanger Into the Future (Black Ops 6)Regardless of which ending plays out, the final scene shows new variants of the original four-soldier crew stepping out of the shadows to welcome the Terminus crew to the party. This deliberate callback to the classic lineup serves as a cliffhanger, teasing that the Dark Aether Saga is not finished and that the next era will carry the story forward.