Into the Spider's Web
311th Penal Auxiliaries – "The Chain Rats"
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATIONIntent: To expand the militarized infrastructure of Morrigal under Darth Virelia's control, introducing a conscript-driven labor corps that supports construction, logistics, and wartime production through enforced servitude. This submission enables storytelling around the darker realities of Sith war economies and the human cost of Virelia's rise.
Image Credit: Midjourney
Role: This unit functions as an industrial labor corps pressed into service under Virelia's regime on Morrigal. They construct fortifications, maintain supply chains, and serve as expendable workforce in hostile conditions.
Permissions: N/A
Links:
GENERAL INFORMATION:
Group Name: The Hollowvein
Classification: Militarized Labor Corps
Affiliation: Darth Virelia
Description:
The 311th Penal Auxiliaries—derisively called The Chain Rats—are an armed labor division made up of convicts, press-ganged locals, and conscripted prisoners of war from the Velgrath campaign. They wear patchwork uniforms, tattered cloaks, and are marked by red iron bands welded around their left biceps—signifying their expendability.
Each squad is overseen by a brutal cadre of non-commissioned Sith loyalists and indoctrinated foremen. Though poorly equipped and lacking in autonomy, the unit is deeply feared by civilians and soldiers alike—not because of their power, but because of what they represent: absolute disposability in service of the Sith.
They are driven not by loyalty, but by fear, conditioning, and the false hope of redemption through labor. Their motto, scrawled in bloodied sigils across trench walls and tunnel bulkheads, reads: Work, or be worked upon.
UNIT INFORMATION
Unit Size: Large
Unit Availability: Uncommon
Unit Experience: Trained
Equipment:
- Electroshock work collars with discipline override
- Reinforced vibro-tools (doubles as melee defense implements)
- Mag-lift crates, terrain-crawlers, collapsible cranes
- Alchemized earth-movers (rumored to consume organic matter)
- Industrial respirators for toxic environments
- Holo-tags for identification and remote command tracking
- Basic blast vests (rare), mining helms, and supply harnesses
- Non-lethal shock batons (used on them more often than by them)
The 311th fulfills all high-risk labor functions deemed unfit for droids or loyalists. This includes trench-digging in active warzones, construction of flak nests, manual excavation in Force-corrupted terrain, repair of collapsed infrastructure, and corpse disposal. In particularly desperate moments, the unit may be thrown into the front line—not as soldiers, but as body screens or suicide sappers.
Their existence frees up loyal Sith troops and industrialists to focus on high-value operations.
Strengths:
- Fearless Laborers: Conditioned to ignore fear and pain, the 311th can function under extreme physical duress—radioactive fallout, unstable terrain, Force anomalies.
- Expendable in Doctrine: Their sheer disposability makes them ideal for tasks that would cripple morale in more elite units.
Weaknesses:
- Low Autonomy: Without direct command, units fall into chaos or retreat. Self-motivation is nearly nonexistent.
- Poor Morale and Hygiene: Disease, exhaustion, and psychological collapse are common. Epidemics can ravage entire squads if not culled regularly.
The 311th Penal Auxiliaries were formed during the first phase of the Velgrath campaign, when the cost of maintaining droid labor and loyal engineers across Morrigal's brutal terrain became unsustainable. Darth Virelia, drawing inspiration from ancient Sith wartime doctrines, ordered the institution of conscription quotas for all subjugated territories on the planet. Criminals, dissidents, and military prisoners were gathered, stripped of identity, and refitted into standardized labor cohorts.
Initially dismissed as inefficient, the 311th quickly proved their value—not through productivity, but through resilience. They survived volcanic blasts, cave-ins, flesh-melting spores, and near-starvation while building the scaffold of Fort Avarice and Hollowvein's tramlines. Those who survived the longest were promoted not for competence, but for brutality.
Today, the 311th are deployed wherever terrain or conditions are considered suicidal. Some commanders claim their cries echo for miles through Morrigal's ravines. Others swear they've seen them keep working even after death—guided not by orders, but by the inertia of terror.
There is no retirement from the 311th. Only reclamation.
Their chains are not broken. They are buried with them.