Kyriaki
Dark Phoenix
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Expand on Tephrike.
Image Credit: Here.
Role: 'Demining'.
Permissions: N/A.
Links: The Valkyrie's Diary, Dominion of Light, Republican Guard, Into Darkness, After Darkness, Glorious Conflict, Firemane, Amidala Corps, Adlerberg, Hope Falls, Caution and Control, Castle Maysaf, Academy of the Scions of the Vader, Sentinel's Rest, Palmyra's Wail, Tephrike, Sibylla Laskaris, What Goes Bump in the Day, The Key Which Unlocks the Void.
GENERAL INFORMATION
Unit Name: Special Pioneer Legions. The name Suicide Legions is more honest, and used by the poor souls forced to serve in these units.
Affiliation: Tephrike, Disciples of the Vader, Government of the Greater Sith Imperium.
Classification: Infantry
Description:
"You've got one chance, one chance alone to earn your freedom and a good meal, xenos. Make it across the field, clear out the mines and the wires. Anyone who doesn't walk forward when I give the order will be shot. Remember, your families are counting on you. You don't want them to suffer because of your cowardice, do you? Now...march!"
In their bid to subjugate all of Tephrike under the boot of 'glorious mankind', the Disciples of the Vader and the 'Greater Sith Imperium' ruled by them have committed all manners of atrocities. Non-human civilian populations are their primary victims. Entire settlements and cities have been wiped, millions have been deported and murdered in camps. Slaves are worked to death in forced labour camps, plantations and on grandiose construction projects. The Vaderites build homes, playgrounds and schools upon the ashes of the 'lesser beings'.
But some 'inferior xenos' are utilised in other barbaric ways. Warfare on Tephrike has regressed in many ways. The use of land mines is common among all of the riven factions of this bloody conflict. Vaderite logic is simple: why risk human lives when one can force aliens to clear them? If they die in the process, it is no loss. Thus the Special Pioneer Legions have been formed. Their name is an awful euphemism. Within these units, alien prisoners are forced to go dig out minefields and clear wire and other obstructions. The average casualty rate is ninety percent. Quite literally, their job is to make way for Vaderite tanks and infantry by clearing barbed wire and minefields with their bodies. They serve as auxiliary units for the 'honourable' Imperial Army.
A starving Rodian or a Twi'lek from a settlement, ghetto or a plantation, for example, may be forcibly conscripted into a special pioneer unit for committing the unforgivable sin of stealing a loaf of bread to survive another day. It is also a place for Vaderite slave owners to send 'uppity' or 'work-shy' slaves to. In addition, it's a way to get rid of slaves who are considered superfluous because they have fallen sick or been injured. Sometimes so-called 'lazy and work-shy elements' are literally snatched from their homes, the streets or the marketplace.
Even minors, the elderly and members of alien species that are somewhat 'favoured' because they can be used as muscle such as Gamorreans are not safe. Young orphans deemed 'racially worthless' are particularly vulnerable. When a labour camp is dissolved, inmates considered unfit are often handed over to the KEC to be murdered...but some are given a stay of execution and conscripted into the Special Pioneer Legions. Other alien 'recruits' are prisoners of war from the Dominion or the Republican Guard...or simply unlucky civilians who had the misfortune of living in an area that was labelled a 'terrorist nest' or 'bandit-infested territory'. Finally, Vaderite recruiters employ deception to get alien inmates of prison camps to sign up, promising them better rations, and medical care. The unit's nature is camouflaged, and the recruits are told it is simply an auxiliary security unit that will operate in the rear area. By the time they figure out the truth, it is too late for them to escape.
However, sometimes these conscription measures arouse protest from Vaderite military and economic authorities, though not for moral reasons. These officials intercede when conscription has deprived them of useful labourers or causing unrest among the populace. For this reason, the Special Pioneer Legions stick to 'recruits' Vaderite authorities will not miss. From the Vaderite perspective, using minors, the sick and the elderly is more cost-effective because healthy adults are more useful as slave labourers. They get a shovel and a pick. One member of a squad of ten gets a bolt cutter. Moreover, they are forced to wear explosive collars, which means they can also be used as suicide bombers. They are denied body armour, and instead receive an identifying red armband. For obvious reasons, they are prohibited from carrying weapons. Many are bound by ropes to prevent desertion. In their reports, Vaderite soldiers refer to the 'alien assets' as 'mine sweeper 42s', as if they were tools rather than people. To make escape even more difficult, they are tattooed.
How do the Vaderites control them? Terror, fear and the very faint hope that if they survive enough missions, they may be given duties that are less horrid. Moreover, there is always the threat that the Vaderites will punish their families and loved ones should they rebel or try to escape. It goes without saying that the servitors feel no loyalty to their oppressive masters...but they have no weapons, and are cowed through terror.
Moreover, the special 'pioneers' are accompanied by Vaderite soldiers armed with pistols, rifles, whips, batons and machine guns, with orders to punish any xenos for 'disobedience'. In the field they serve as barrier troops, preventing the flight of pioneers by mowing down escapees with machine gun salvoes. On average, these soldiers are reservists from an ordinary middle-aged men of working or middle class background who have been drafted but found to be ineligible for frontline service. Others are regular soldiers who have been assigned to this unit to provide a degree of professionalism. Only a small number of these soldiers are Humanist Party members and none are Sith. They are, in short, ordinary men, but they nonetheless carry out their monstrous tasks with murderous zeal. Most have families back home and used to have normal day jobs being drafted. When their service is up, they go back home to their wives and children and resume their normal lives as artisans, dock workers, clerks, barbers, pharmacists, teachers, seamen, waiters, janitors and truck drivers. And they sleep soundly because, after all, they only 'did their duty to the fatherland'.
Unlike the pioneers, the human guards receive some rudimentary body armour, basic helmets and gas masks. Serving in one of the Special Pioneer Legions is a comfortable posting for human soldiers and officers, since they are not meant to actually engage in serious combat. Moreover, they have license to abuse and exploit their servitors. Needless to say they perform poorly in actual combat when they face an enemy who can fight back.
It goes without saying that Republican Guard or Dominion troops will brutally torture and kill these Vaderite soldiers if they manage to take them captive. Indeed, they are fond of pulling a role reversal and making the Vaderites clear mines with their bodies...or wounding them, and stuffing them with timed explosives so that their comrades or Vaderite civilians are blown up when they try to help them. It goes without saying that family members of human soldiers in the Special Pioneer Legions will also be targeted for retaliation if they can be identified. On extremely rare occasions, the Vaderites will force a human who is viewed as a 'degenerate' to join the Special Pioneers as one of the prisoners. Examples are pacifists, queer people and humans who 'shamed their species' having a romantic relationship with an alien. Vaderites view humans as people, so these pioneers constitute a tiny minority. Unsurprisingly, pioneers who manage to escape utterly despise the Vaderite regime, and tend to be very determined to strike back against their tormentors.
Major Yorgos Anthides is one of the human commanders of the Special Pioneers. He has a petit-bourgeois background. As a teenager, he secured an apprenticeship as a barber. However, because this trade provided limited opportunities, he joined the police force. His new profession provided him with status and he liked the cleanliness of a police uniform. He was eventually conscripted into the army as a reservist. During his military service, he was also responsible for providing security during the round-up and murder of aliens with physical and mental disabilities. The army used the 'cleansing action' as an opportunity to conduct a weapons' test. After being wounded in combat, he sought training as an engineer and was reassigned to a Special Pioneer Legion.
Anthides has taken to his new position with gusto. He rationalises what he does by not viewing the poor unfortunate souls he is using as living mine sweepers as people, but as material objects. To him they are a large mass of flesh that he must drive forward, with bullets and the whip if needed. Anthides is neither a coward nor a sadist, he simply doesn't feel any empathy for them. He has an obsession with order and structure and prides himself on how 'orderly' his deployments are. The arbitrary culling of xenos has been banned in his unit because he thinks it is wasteful. At the same time, he reprimands subordinates who display 'weakness' by showing an 'undue amount of sympathy for the xenos'. He has adopted the practice of assigning numbers to the 'xenos assets'. They are punished if they identify themselves by name rather than number. He administers collective punishments to disincentivise desertions and escape attempts.
Lieutenant Serafim Martellis is another human officer who serves in one of the legions. Incredibly corrupt, abusive and almost constantly drunk, he has carved himself a niche by assuming responsibility for upholding 'discipline'. The families of the legionaires are permitted to send food parcels to their loved ones, but he and his comrades often steal them. At the same time the legionaires are forced to send reassuring letters to their families and tell their loved ones that everything is alright. He has a big kath hound, and has a habit of setting it on alien legionaires he considers 'uppity'. Martellis is also sadistic towards 'deviant humans' in his unit. He drinks heavily, and is known to get violent when intoxicated. Martellis is the unimpressive failson of a Party official. When he was conscripted, he leveraged his connections to make sure he'd be assigned to a post with little danger. He would rather be an officer in a guards regiment since that is a lot more prestigious. Unfortunately for him, they prefer the Non-Force-Using sons of Sith.
'Horns' is a Zabrak male who belongs to the pioneers. His real name is Dra Nestna. As a homeless child, he was abducted and forcibly conscripted as a forced labourer. He was one of many abductees who suffered this horrid fate. A few were deemed suitable for racial indoctrination, but he was soon transferred to a special pioneer legion because a supervisor in the labour camp considered him 'uppity'. His supervisors beat him for speaking in his native language. Horns is called 'Lucky' for somehow surviving about a dozen missions now. Several times he has been close to death, either in battle or from bored humans, but so far he has almost miraculously survived. A dedicated, highly observant autodidact, he has taught himself survival techniques to make it through the hell he has been put in. Now an adult, he is secretly planning to put his luck to the test with an escape.
Florian Kallelis is, from the Vaderite standpoint, a 'degenerate'. He is a human male who used to be a librarian. However, he committed the 'unforgivable' sin of falling in love with a male Togruta labourer, whom he tried to help. Kallelis illegally brought him food parcels and helped him smuggle out letters to his family. He was denounced by his family for 'performing acts contrary to nature' and 'shaming his race'. It was discovered that he owned 'forbidden literature that promoted degeneracy'. As such he was imprisoned, and sentenced by the People's Court. Since he had argued for greater tolerance, he was stuck in the unit with the xenos to die. The human officers like to sadistically joke that he can 'increase his tolerance' as he digs mines out. His lover was tortured and hanged.
Yanal Dor is a Twi'lek member of a special pioneer legion. His story is a tragic one, for he used to be a member of the ghetto police in a Twi'lek ghetto. This was an auxiliary unit organised by the local council to 'keep order'. Conditions in the ghetto were appalling. The residents lived in abject poverty, and diseases were widespread due to malnutrition. Yanal joined the police to protect his family...at the cost of serving the Vaderites. The ghetto was an open-air prison, and he had to crack down on inmates trying to escape and struggling to survive. He took bribes, swindled food rations and sometimes warned residents about impending deportations. An impossible situation, with no easy, morally clear-cut choices.
But it was all for nothing. When the ghetto residents were deported en masse, the ghetto police had to do the dirty work. The promise that his family would be spared turned out to be phony. His 'reward' for his service was to be conscripted into a pioneer legion. Yanar has been told that his wife and children are still alive, and that they have been given less strenuous work on a farm. He very much doubts that any of this true.
COMBAT INFORMATION:
Unit Size: Large
Unit Availability: Uncommon
Unit Experience: Rabble
Equipment: The indentured pioneers get a shovel and a pick. One member of a squad of ten gets a bolt cutter, and a simplistic prodder to detect mines. They are forced to wear explosive collars, which can be triggered by their human officers at the push of a button. Human soldiers of the legions wear Kinetic Armour, blast vest, and a basic helmet to protect against chemicals, and are armed with basic Slugthrower Rifles, Submachine Guns or Machine Guns, along with Slugthrower Pistols, batons, and a few grenades (smoke, frag, stun, flash). Officers or NCOs may also carry a whip. They also receive basic mine detection equipment such as metal detectors and prodders. Aliens are denied weapons under pain of death. The same applies to those few humans who have been made legionaires as punishment. Kath hounds are used as sniffer dogs...and to keep legionaires in line.
Combat Function: The mission of the Special Pioneer Legions is a simple...and all too often deadly one. They serve as living mine sweepers, clearing barbed wire and minefields with their bodies. The indentured servitors are driven forward by barrier troops who will shoot them if they step out of line or attempt to flee. Equipped with explosive collars, the pioneers can also be turned into living bombs by their merciless handlers.
Predictably, casualties are astronomical. The Vaderites do not mind because to them it is a feature, not a bug. After all, when a 'lesser being' is killed by a landmine or a bullet, that means said landmine or bullet cannot kill a 'worthy' human soldier. Of course, the pioneers know they are expendable...and thus morale is predictably low. They are held together by fear and desperation...but the Vaderites must be on guard, lest a desperate pioneer use the chance to suicidally throw himself on his tormentor. For this reason, they are given minimal equipment and denied weapons.
Force Abilities (Force User Units Only): N/A
Strengths:
- Expendable and available in large numbers. Quite literally, they are live mine sweepers. Their job is to make way for Vaderite tanks and infantry by clearing barbed wire and minefields with their bodies...and more often than not die in the process. Can also be utilised as living bombs since their handlers can detonate their explosive collars via remote control.
- Disloyal. For obvious reasons, the pioneers really hate their oppressors. Fear keeps them in line...but if they see an opportunity to escape, the prisoners will take it.
- Bad training, lack of proper equipment and the barbaric way the units are run lead to massive casualties. The Vaderites view this as a feature, not a bug...but the human soldiers assigned to keep the pioneers in line make poor fighters in an actual battle. Moreover, their equipment is dated and they are lightly armoured.
The Special Pioneer Legions are the product of a devastated, war-torn planet where the Dark Age never ended. When the Gulag Virus ravaged the galaxy, Tephrike descended into chaos. Cut off from the galactic trade it depended on, it experienced social and economic collapse. War, famine, the plague and other diseases killed millions. With the federal government unable to weather the storm, and warlordism on the rise, the local Jedi assumed a protective stance. Believing that they were the last Jedi in the galaxy, they staged a coup to restore order.
But this caused the planet to descend further into chaos. Good intentions were led astray, as the Jedi were corrupted by power and strife, establishing a totalitarian theocracy called the Dominion of Light. Foes arose in the form of the Disciples of the Vader, a genocidal, human supremacist cult that established a breakaway state after their attempt to eclipse the light failed, and the Republican Guard, a revolutionary vanguard movement that sought to break the tyrannical reign of Force-Users, by any means necessary. The Vaderites established a totalitarian regime built upon the bedrock of slavery, human supremacism and Vader worship. Non-humans only had value to them if they could be exploited as servitors or slave labourers. Otherwise they would be murdered via mass shootings, chemical weapons or being worked to death.
The origins of the Special Pioneers lay in the so-called Arduous March of the Vaderites. After the cataclysmic battle of Palmyra, the Vaderite army was forced to retreat from the victorious Dominion. Vaderite panegyrists would turn it into an epic. Pursued and harried by their enemies, they crossed mountains, turbulent rivers and impassable grassland. In truth, it was characterised by political infighting, futile deaths and horrible atrocities against civilian populations. Moreover, while the Dominion's army did pursue the Vaderites, the pursuers mostly consisted of conscripts and militias, for many of the elite clone legions had been bled white at Palmyra.
Perhaps one of the worst crimes the Vaderites committed during the Arduous March was kidnapping alien civilians and using them to death charge pursuing Dominion forces, or strap bombs to them and send them forward to die. The Vaderite army commander who was first deployed the special pioneers in a systematic manner was Pantelis Sarkas, a man who prided himself on his ability to 'manage xenos'. Many of the pioneers were Twi'leks, whom the Vaderites particularly despised. Twi'lek adults and elderly were pressed into 'service' with the threat that otherwise their children or grandchildren would not be spared. Other victims were 'xenos' vagabonds, homeless and urchins.
When the Vaderites rounded up aliens as forced labourers, those deemed to be unproductive as labourers were often sent to special pioneer units. Select pioneers were given Key to get them addicted and thus make them more obedient. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the pioneers had perished by the time the Vaderites planted their standards upon the battlements of Castle Maysaf. Most of the few survivors had suffered grievous injuries, and were killed due to being 'useless eaters'. Meanwhile, Sarkas retired peacefully to become a landowner.
However, the concept endured, and was later revived. In their current form, the Special Pioneers were used to break through the 'Argent Bastion' of the Dominion. To the generals of Supreme Leader Hyperion, the pioneers were an inexhaustible resource that could be thrown at the enemy to break up the static lines of trench warfare the 'lightning war' had devolved into. Thus thousands of people were thrown at minefields and wire so that the 'real' soldiers could follow in their wake. Blocking squads set up in the rear massacred pioneers who tried to flee. The Vaderites also sent them into the jungle to trigger traps laid by the Republican Guard. In one such 'anti-partisan operation', approximately two to three thousand local people were blown up in the clearing of the minefields. However, the decision of individual Vaderite commanders to pressgang Gamorreans and Mirialans they considered 'uppity' into the legions caused a backlash. Members of these communities had collaborated with the Vaderites, but resented being so openly thrown away as cannon fodder. After all, that was how Twi'leks and Mon Calamari should be treated. The Vaderites responded with predictably brutality, though efforts were made to regulate the legions better.
Initially the conscription of humans to serve as living mine clearers was heavily frowned upon, for it hit too close to home. This changed following the ascent of Supreme Leader, a racial purist who saw the Light Sith insurrection as evidence that there was too much impure blood hidden among the otherwise pure human population of the Imperium. Pacifists, gender-nonconforming individuals, homosexuals and those who had 'shamed their race' were also rounded up. This caused some disquiet among some Party functionaries and Vaderite government officials. After all, they were humans, though all Vaderites agreed they were 'degenerate' ones. There was concern that mixing humans and xenos together would undermine mankind's natural place as the 'master'.
More recently, a pioneer called Trakana Kul, male Twi'lek, managed to achieve a breakout. Trakana was a skilled engineer who had fled his hometown together with his family to escape a Vaderite bombing as part of a column of refugees. Forced to fend for themselves in the countryside, the family had to forage. However, uncontrolled population movements were suspicious to the Vaderites, who suspected partisans. As a Twi'lek, Trakana was automatically suspect. He was arrested by Vaderite soldiers while trying to barter with a local farmer. A Vaderite soldier had been shot by a partisan sharpshooter, and since the occupiers could not find the sharpshooter, they simply arrested anyone they considered suspicious.
Unlike most of those arrested, Trakana was spared because he was a skilled engineer. But he was sent to a pioneer legion for being 'uppity'. Against all odds, he survived, though he forever lost part of his lekku and some of his fingers to an explosion. He was eventually able to acquire a collection of the mines he had cleared and other explosives and secreted them around the Vaderite base with the aid of a cadre of friends. Then, on the appointed day he used a reconfigured remote detonator and blew up the base before making his escape. This shocking development led to worse conditions going forward as the Vaderites ensured it wouldn't happen again, but the engineer escaped to the Republican Guard.
