Imperial Military Service

By Their Own Words

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“Order, Progress, Liberty”

– official, Charter-enshrined motto of the Empire

“Secure against Eternity.”

– corporate motto, Crystal Flame, ICC

“All debts must be paid.”

– official motto of the Curia

“Because enough… is never enough.”

– corporate motto, Decadence, ICC

“Through reason alone, we ascend.”

– motto of the Eupraxic Collegium

“Every coin Our given word.”

– carved above the main doors of the Exchequer

“Knowledge is its own justification.”

– official motto of the Fellowship of Natural Philosophy

“We do what we can, because we must.”

– very unofficial motto of the Fellowship of Natural Philosophy

“Between the Flame and the Fire.”

– official motto of the Imperial Military Service

“Civilization has enemies; we kill the bastards.”

– barrack-room paraphrase of the motto of the Imperial Military Service

“Until no man dares command another.”

– motto of the Sanguinary Enforcers of the Liberty Ethic

“The truth that sears away the Darkness.”

– corporate motto, Telememe, ICC news division

“When all else fails, we stand ready.”

– corporate motto, Ultimate Argument Risk Control, ICC

“[redacted for reasons of state security]”

– motto of Imperial State Security, Fifth Directorate

Trope-a-Day: Badass Army

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Badass Army: The Imperial Legions try very hard to play this one straight when they have to.  Because of the low-growth, low-manpower demographics of a long-lived species, they generally prefer to eschew most army-type fights in favor of the Sneaky Bastard special-ops method of warfare, or better yet, the the-leaders-of-our-enemies-all-dropped-dead-in-totally-unrelated-accidents-that-cannot-be-connected-to-us-three-years-before-the-war-would-have-happened method of not-warfare.  But sometimes you have to have a real war anyway…

…which is where they figure they need to make the most of the limited number of sophont resources available, by virtue of equipping them all with genetic and cybernetic enhancements (see: Super Soldier), training them rigorously in their own version of The Spartan Way, including in the incredible coordination and discipline that comes from fighting as a conflux (temporary group-mind), and then equipping them lavishly, which means power armor even for regular infantry and combat exoskeletons amounting to walking tanks for the heavy kind, a plethora of Mecha Mooks and Attack Drones attached to each individual soldier, and liberal use of heavy weapons up to and including nuclear/antimatter hand grenades.

After all, when you don’t have numbers, you might as well plow that budget into extended training and capital equipment, right?  The Legions themselves may be small in number, but they work hard to make facing them like facing an army made up entirely of elite troops, with a weight of metal on the field a couple of dozen times higher than should be reasonable for that number of people.

Trope-a-Day: Warrior Poet

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Warrior Poet: Where, in the Imperial opinion, Cultured Warrior and The Spartan Way meet; or the intended product of the latter.  What a sentinel is supposed to be; not merely someone who can fight, but someone who understands the philosophy of fighting, and the art of fighting, and the principles by and for which one should fight.  (And would understand perfectly where the Vikings and the Irish and the “pen and sword in accord” samurai were coming from.)

And the ability to quip, or better yet toss off a perfectly formed chelír, mid-battle certainly also doesn’t hurt.

Trope-a-Day: Mildly Military

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Mildly Military: Played… somewhat, due to a combination of the personality traits mentioned in various places (see, primarily, Blue and Orange Morality) which make regular boot-camp disindividuation/personality reformation, ah, less than productive, and the structure of the Imperial Military Service itself (the not-enough-forces-to-have-non-elite-forces model described under Badass Army).  It is the general opinion of their strategoi that when you have a military service composed of ubercompetent technical experts and Warrior Poets highly trained in inner discipline according to the local Spartan Way, a more collegial atmosphere is to be preferred.

Trope-a-Day: Cultured Warrior

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Cultured Warrior: A very important aspect of training and institutional culture, not just for the Imperial Military Service, but for the entire sentinel darëssef, which includes the police, emergency services, paramedics, etc.  The argument runs, essentially, that it has dangerous and unpleasant side effects to have people running around trained to fight who know nothing else but fighting, be it fighting wars, fighting crime, fighting disease, or fighting entropy, and are thus disconnected from the finer things in life and the gentler, civilized virtues.

Thus, in addition to everything else, sentinel training (including even the seriously harsh kind used by the Imperial Legions) works hard to cultivate a taste for high culture and an appreciation for the finer things in life as a contrast to and counterpart for the gritty side of life.  In action, the institutions of the darëssef, from the IMS, the ISS, the Watch Constabulary, etc., on down have traditions to encourage this, including specific cultural leave in which their membership is encouraged to immerse themselves in this side of life on the institutional dime, in the interest of keeping them collectively healthy, functional, and complete.

Even many mercenary outfits do this, on the grounds that a sane mercenary is a more profitable mercenary.

Trope-a-Day: Super Soldier

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Super Soldier: Most successful galactic militaries and mercenary organizations tend to have a favorite package of military-specialized genetic enhancements, nanoviruses, and implants; these days, receiving at least the “military-basic” upgrade package (a whole shopping list of enhancements on top of the already impressive alpha baseline, for the Empire’s version) – usually sometime around the midpoint of basic training, once they’re reasonably sure you’re not going to snap on them and quit – is more or less necessary to compete on the battlefield, especially as regular not-in-the-combat-exoskeletons infantry.  (Although, commonly enough, those troops have their own upgrade requirements.)