Work In Progress Chrome Guardians

[Prystill Oasay]

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

• Intent: To establish the Chrome Guardians as an elite protective security unit of the Mahporeem Imperial Remnant, providing a standardized NPC unit for the protection of senior government officials, diplomats, military commanders, and other individuals or locations deemed vital to the Remnant.
• Image Credit: Original images generated for this submission.
• Role: The Chrome Guardians serve as the Mahporeem Imperial Remnant's elite protective security personnel. They are assigned to senior officials, important dignitaries, sensitive government facilities, diplomatic missions, and other high-value security duties where ordinary military or law-enforcement personnel are considered insufficient. Individual Guardians or small teams may serve as permanent protective details, while larger detachments can provide security for major government functions or particularly sensitive locations.
• Permissions: N/A
• Links:
  • Mahporeem Imperial Remnant
  • Chrome Guardian Armor
  • Chrome Guardian Electrostaff

GENERAL INFORMATION

• Unit Name: Chrome Guardians
• Affiliation: Mahporeem Imperial Remnant
• Classification: Elite Protective Security / Bodyguards / Close-Quarters Combat
• Description: The Chrome Guardians are an elite corps entrusted with the personal security of the Mahporeem Imperial Remnant's most important officials and assets. Their name derives from the polished chromium incorporated into their distinctive dark armor, producing a recognizable appearance intended to convey authority without sacrificing combat utility.
  
  Chrome Guardians are disciplined, conspicuous, and deliberately professional. Unlike intelligence agents or covert protection officers, a Guardian is rarely intended to disappear into a crowd. Their visible presence communicates that the individual or location under their protection is important and that reaching it will require passing through some of the Remnant's best-trained security personnel.
  
  Despite their imposing appearance, the Guardians are not ceremonial soldiers. Their primary responsibility is protection rather than prestige. They are expected to remain close to their principal, identify developing threats, control access, coordinate evacuation, and place themselves between an attacker and their charge when prevention fails.
  
  The Chrome Guardians possess no universal species or gender requirement. Candidates are selected according to ability, temperament, loyalty, and suitability for protective work rather than appearance or background.

COMBAT INFORMATION:

• Unit Size: Small — Chrome Guardians normally deploy individually or in teams ranging from two to approximately twelve personnel. The exact size of a detail depends upon the importance of the protected individual, location, and anticipated threat.
• Unit Availability: Rare — The Chrome Guardians constitute a comparatively small elite corps. Their selection and training requirements prevent rapid replacement, and only a limited number of Guardian details are available at any given time.
• Unit Experience: Elite — Chrome Guardians are selected from personnel who have already demonstrated exceptional discipline and combat aptitude before undergoing additional protective-security training.
• Equipment:
  • Chrome Guardian Armor
  • Chrome Guardian Electrostaff
  • Blaster pistols
  • Stun weapons
  • Vibroblades
  • Restraints
  • Encrypted comlinks
  • Medical and emergency supplies
  • Portable scanners
  • Mission-specific protective and security equipment
  
  Individual Guardians may receive specialized equipment appropriate to their assignments. Such equipment is not necessarily representative of the equipment available to every member of the unit.
  
• Combat Function: Chrome Guardians are first and foremost bodyguards. Their measure of success is not the number of enemies defeated but whether their assigned principal remains alive and secure.
  
  Guardian doctrine therefore emphasizes threat recognition, positioning, interception, controlled aggression, and evacuation. When accompanying an individual, Guardians position themselves so that they can rapidly place armor, weapons, or their own bodies between their principal and an emerging threat. If attacked, the closest Guardian engages or obstructs the threat while other members of the detail move the principal toward a predetermined secure location.
  
  Their electrostaffs are particularly useful for this purpose. The weapons provide reach, allow Guardians to control corridors and approaches, and offer both conventional striking capability and electrical incapacitation. Guardians are trained to use the staff defensively as much as offensively, creating physical space around their principals rather than pursuing opponents unnecessarily.
  
  Chrome Guardians frequently cooperate with conventional military forces, intelligence personnel, local security, and law enforcement. During larger engagements they are generally kept near command personnel or critical locations rather than incorporated into ordinary infantry formations.
  
  When evacuation becomes necessary, the Guardians prioritize movement over combat. They will disengage from otherwise favorable fights, abandon defensible positions, and deliberately place themselves at tactical disadvantages if doing so improves the survival prospects of the individual they protect.
  
  Although all Chrome Guardians receive familiarization training concerning Force-users and lightsabers, they are not universally anti-Force-user specialists. Selected Guardians may receive additional training and specialized equipment for assignments in which hostile Force-sensitive opponents are considered a significant possibility.
  
• Force Abilities (Force User Units Only): N/A. The Chrome Guardians are not a Force-user unit. Individual members may conceivably possess Force sensitivity, but Force sensitivity is neither required nor a standard component of Guardian training.

Strengths:

• The Principal Comes First: Chrome Guardians are elite protective specialists. Their training emphasizes situational awareness, threat recognition, defensive positioning, evacuation, and coordinated response. They do not need to defeat an attacker to accomplish their mission; they need to keep their principal alive.
• Close-Quarters Specialists: Extensive training with electrostaffs, sidearms, unarmed combat, and confined-space fighting makes the Guardians particularly dangerous at the distances at which assassination attempts and attacks against protected individuals commonly occur.
• Disciplined Under Pressure: Guardians are selected partly for their ability to continue functioning during chaotic situations. They are expected to follow protective doctrine despite injury, confusion, intimidation, or the temptation to pursue an attacker.
• Hard to Kill: Standard Chrome Guardian armor provides substantial protection against conventional battlefield threats and allows a Guardian to deliberately expose themselves to dangers that would make an ordinary security officer hesitate.

Weaknesses:

• Protect the Principal: The defining strength of the Chrome Guardians can also be exploited. Their priority remains their assigned principal. An opponent who threatens civilians, creates multiple simultaneous dangers, or forces the Guardians to choose between pursuit and evacuation can manipulate their priorities.
• Not an Army: Chrome Guardians are few in number and expensive in both time and resources to replace. They cannot provide the numerical strength, sustained firepower, or battlefield coverage of conventional infantry.
• Close-Quarters Focus: Guardian equipment and training heavily favor protective and close-range engagements. Dedicated snipers, artillery, heavy weapons, starfighters, and opponents able to maintain extreme distance can force them to rely upon supporting forces.
• Highly Visible: Chrome Guardian armor is designed to make their presence unmistakable. This provides deterrence but makes covert operations difficult and immediately identifies both the Guardians and, frequently, the importance of whoever they are protecting.
• The Force: Standard Chrome Guardians are trained to recognize the threat posed by Force-users, but recognition is not equivalence. Telekinesis, precognition, enhanced speed, mental abilities, lightsabers, and other Force-user capabilities can overwhelm conventional protective tactics. Specialized Guardians may be better prepared for such encounters, but they remain exceptional members of the corps rather than its baseline.

HISTORICAL INFORMATION

The Chrome Guardians were established by the Mahporeem Imperial Remnant to answer a problem that ordinary soldiers could not adequately solve. The Remnant possessed stormtroopers, naval personnel, intelligence operatives, and conventional security forces, but protecting the individuals responsible for directing those institutions required personnel with a fundamentally different mission.

A soldier was trained to defeat the enemy.

A Chrome Guardian was trained to make certain the enemy never reached someone else.

Candidates for the Guardians were therefore drawn from promising military, security, and other suitable personnel rather than recruited directly into the corps. Physical ability was important, but raw combat skill alone was insufficient. Candidates were evaluated for discipline, situational awareness, judgment, loyalty, restraint, and their willingness to remain focused upon another person's survival while under extreme pressure.

Training reinforced that distinction. Guardians learned close-quarters combat and weapons handling alongside protective formations, evacuation procedures, threat recognition, crowd management, emergency medical response, secure communications, and coordination with military and intelligence organizations. Considerable emphasis was placed upon avoiding the natural tendency of experienced fighters to pursue a retreating enemy. A Guardian who chased an assassin and left their principal exposed had failed regardless of whether the assassin was subsequently killed.

Their distinctive Chrome Guardian Armor eventually transformed the unit into one of the more recognizable symbols of Mahporeem authority. The polished chromium that gave the Guardians their name was retained partly because recognition itself served a protective function. A Chrome Guardian standing beside an official informed observers that the individual was protected and that any attack would encounter immediate resistance.

As the Remnant's diplomatic and political activities expanded, so did the Guardians' responsibilities. They increasingly accompanied officials beyond secure government compounds, operating aboard starships, at diplomatic gatherings, industrial sites, foreign worlds, and other locations where Mahporeem could not depend entirely upon local security.

Experience also demonstrated that conventional assassins were not the only threat facing senior Imperial officials. The presence of Jedi, Sith, and other Force-sensitive combatants throughout the galaxy forced the Guardians to develop doctrine for encounters with opponents whose capabilities could circumvent conventional security measures. All Guardians consequently receive instruction in recognizing common Force-user tactics and responding to lightsaber-equipped opponents.

The Remnant does not pretend that such instruction places an ordinary Guardian on equal terms with a trained Jedi or Sith.

Instead, Guardian doctrine focuses upon delay, disruption, teamwork, and evacuation. A Guardian facing a superior opponent is expected to buy seconds rather than seek glory. Those seconds may allow another Guardian to evacuate the principal, permit reinforcements to arrive, or simply place another sealed door between the attacker and their objective.

Particularly dangerous assignments may warrant more extensive preparation. Selected Guardians can receive specialized anti-Force-user training and equipment tailored to the expected threat. Such specialists remain exceptions rather than the standard.

The Chrome Guardians as a whole remain what they were created to be: a small corps of highly trained protectors expected to stand visibly between the Mahporeem Imperial Remnant's most important people and those who would do them harm.