Eternal Father
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION- Intent: Modernize the Blackblade Guard
- Image Credit: Click - KaRolding@DeviantArt
- Role: The Emperor's Personal Army
- Links:
Previous Submission
GENERAL INFORMATION
- Unit Name: The Blackblade Guard
- Affiliation: [member="Darth Carnifex"], the Zambrano Family
- Classification: Elite Infantry
- Equipment:
Armor:
Blackblade Combat Armor Mk-V
[*]Melee Weapons:
[*]Ranged Weapons:
- Autokrator Assault Blaster Rifle
- SIF-57s Blaster Pistol
- SIF-7 'Minos' Particle Beam Pistol [Blackblade Officers Only]
- Brute Rotary Blaster Cannon
[*]Grenades:
- Thermal Detonator
- Electro Magnetic Pulse Grenade
- DAX-15 L.I.S. Grenade
- Ion Grenade
- Dioxis Grenade
- Flash Grenade
- Thermal Imploder
- Sonic Imploder
- Nereus' Breath Incendiary Grenade
[*]Ranged Weapon Accessories:
[*]Cybernetic Implants:
- Adrenal Implant
- Advanced Aural Amplifier
- Cardio-Muscular Package
Ex-Musc Enhancement - Q-2 Artificial Heart
[*]Cybernetic Weapon Enhancement
[*]Emotional Regulator
[*]Hi-Sense Enhanced Eyes
[*]Hyperaccelerated Nerve Implant
[*]Vehicles:
- Dirk-class Dropship
- Falchion-class Heavy Dropship
- All Terrain Heavy Assault Walker
- MAVr Claymore-class Repulsortank
- Carnivore-class Heavy Repulsortank
COMBAT INFORMATION
- Availability: Rare
- Deployment: Minor
- Strengths:
Elite Soldiers: The Blackblade Guard is one of the most elite paramilitary organizations in modern galactic history, participating in almost every Sith-Republic engagement since the Sith-Mandalorian War. This accumulated experience and expertise on waging war has been repurposed to teach new recruits, ensuring the lineage of the Guard's forebearers lives on. - Unflinching Loyalists: Each and every member of the Blackblade Guard is conditioned to possess unwavering loyalty in the Sith Emperor Carnifex. This is accomplished via a combination of cybernetic implants, Dark Side science, and good old-fashioned mental conditioning. They are the perfect soldier and will never disobey or disregard a command, no matter how heinous.
[*]Weaknesses:
- Selective Use: Designed as a force amplifier, the Blackblades are never deployed en masse in any engagement. Rather they are utilized to supplement army groups as elite commando units or shock troop battalions, undertaking risks that would prove too strenuous for the Sith Empire's recruited or levied soldiers. Thus, they cannot be everywhere at once and are only deployed at the discretion of the most prominent members of the Zambrano Family.
- Lots of Cybernetics: Around forty percent of an average Blackblade Guard's body is comprised of high tech cybernetics that strips away their humanity and turns them into loyal soldiers who do not tire or show mercy. However, this leaves them exceptionally vulnerable to electrical and ion attacks that can interfere with their cybernetics, causing all sorts of problems from motor malfunction to internal bleeding.
- Zambrano Only: The Blackblade Guard is restricted only to use by the Zambrano Family, and is not considered part of the central Sith-Imperial military hierarchy. They are not very receptive to taking orders from anyone else other than senior members of the Zambrano household, and thus can only be reigned in and controlled by them.
DESCRIPTION
The image of the Sith Emperor, Darth Carnifex, is never thought of without his black-plated butchers stretched out in many legions behind him. For nearly thirty years the Blackblades has served as his sword, scouring the lands in which he waged war upon with unflinching brutality and eager, almost jovial, maliciousness unrivaled by many in the galaxy. Though their numbers have swelled and dwindled over the years, they have nonetheless remained a feared and highly elite army in service to the Dark Side.
But their beginnings were quite small. They originally started out as a personal guard for the newly christened Minister of Intelligence Kaine Zambrano, who was only thirty-eight at the time. Handpicked from those agents he had established relations within his years as an Imperial Agent, they were each sworn in to protect his person at all costs.
Yearning for stronger followers, the Minister dabbled in combining the secrets of Sith science with cybernetics to enhance his Guard and formulate stronger soldiers in his service. To this end, he enlisted the aid of the Arkanian scientist Arkoh Grevane to perfect the conditioning regimen that would turn these test subjects into brutal warriors. The majority of the attempts ended in failure and death, but two of these subjects managed to survive the experiments as perfectly loyal soldiers.
Their names were Xander and Baelric, Humans from the Outer Rim worlds of Lianna and Telos respectively.
They were only the first and soon enough Minister Zambrano inducted such brazen warriors as Osbasid and Anthmar into the growing ranks of his personal Guard. To commemorate his success, he rechristened them as the Black Blades, his most loyal warriors within the Sith Empire. By the time of the Sith-Mandalorian War, the Blades' ranks had swelled to several hundred soldiers all enhanced through the same method as those original few.
But seasons changed and Zambrano accumulated more political power, eventually being appointed Emperor Moridin's Grand Vizier at the start of the Sith-Mandalorian War. By its end, he was Grand Vizier to Moridin's successor, Ashin Varanin. It was under her administration that Zambrano began to accelerate his efforts to amass power, and expanded the Blades' recruitment efforts.
By the time Varanin was overthrown by Voracitos, the Blades' numbered in the thousands. At that point is when they changed from the Black Blades into the Blackblade Guard, their evolution complete. And they would only continue to grow in power and strength as Emperors came and went before Zambrano's ultimate ascension to the Imperial throne. They were now his personal army, a force through which he could exercise his might and will on a previously unimaginable scale.
Through them he brought death and ruin to Togoria, slaughtering a large majority of its population and ensorcelling the rest through slavery. They were his last line of defense as the Republic engaged the outlying Sith worlds in war, but in the end, their strength faltered and Emperor Zambrano was cast down during the Battle of Mon Cala.
Momentarily without direction from their Lord and Master, a large number of the Blackblade Guard went insane and ended their lives through either their own hand or on the swords of the Republic as they pushed deeper into Imperial territory. Xander and Baelric perished during the Battle of Korriban, their bodies cast into the red sands as the Republic raised their flag over the tomb-world.
But there were some who resisted madness, soldiers like the Humans Osbasid and Morcar, the Echani Anthmar, the Epicanthix Brutus and Zaddion, and the Arkanian scientist Arkoh. They fled to Thule to reorganize what they could of the Blackblade Guard. It was there that Kaine Zambrano rejoined his faithful servants, freed from the shackles of the Republic by the enigmatic One Sith. He assembled what loyal forces he could and struck out for his homeworld of Panatha. There they helped Zambrano reclaim his family's place as the pinnacle of Panathan civilization, casting down all claimants and adversaries to his new regime.
But Panatha was only ever meant to serve as the last redoubt, a place where the former Emperor could lick his wounds before he relocated the majority of his forces to the Deep Core. There he reunited with many scattered elements of the Sith Empire and their new benefactors, the One Sith. He pledged his loyalty to their Dark Lord and gained the name Vornskr in return, serving as one of his most powerful arbiters of power.
This would soon escalate into the Great Core War between the One Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic, the former of which sprung forth from the Deep Core like a burst pustule. Entire systems fell to the Sith's onslaught in the first few months of fighting before Coruscant itself was caught in their grasp. Vornskr used this opportunity to improve upon his Blackblade's diminished strength and appointed Anthmar to the newly created position of Highlord of the Guard.
Under Anthmar they would wage beautiful war against the Sith's enemies, fighting hundreds of battles across the Core and Inner Rim on multiple fronts. Ultimately, Anthmar would be slain during the Battle of Kashyyyk and replaced by Osbasid, who slew many rival claimants to the title which earned him the moniker of Blade-Breaker.
Osbasid would prove to be the greatest and fiercest of the Emperor's soldiers, his loyalty beyond mere fanaticism and into utter worship. Through his guidance the Blackblade Guard would become far more than just a fighting force, it would become a force of nature as it ripped through the Republic's lines like a hurricane, unstoppable and merciless. In this, they truly fulfilled their purpose as Vornskr's instruments of death and destruction, and they reveled in the butchery they inflicted.
And though the wheel of fate would spin again and the One Sith fell and Vornskr became Carnifex, the Blackblade's desire to carry out their mission never wavered. By the time of the Siege of Commenor, the Blackblade Guard now numbered one hundred and fifty thousand individual guardsman.
The Butcher King's Blades, as dark and as cruel as the Black Iron Tyrant himself.
