Editing The Volunteers Main Page

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000‏‎]]

This is a wiki for The Volunteers, an Only War play by post campaign about a WH40k Imperial Guard regiment.

==Campaign premise==

One-sentence pitch: “What if soldiers from a world like ours volunteered for the Imperial Guard?”

And to provide the right mood and atmosphere for what that means, here are a couple of music videos.

[https://bit.ly/2oZ5e5o '''Imperial Guard''']

[https://bit.ly/2ns7529 '''The Volunteers''']


The idea would not work with a world exactly like ours, of course, but it would with something that is almost like our world, but with Imperial trappings. So that is what we go with.

===Original premise===

Imagine a world much like our own when it comes to technology level, standard of living and form of government. There are multiple nation states. Some are more developed than others. They have different forms of government from democracies to dictatorships. They trade, send diplomats, and occasionally go to war with each other. In WH40k terms, it would be a particularly pleasant Imperial World.

An Imperial World has Imperial trappings, of course, and this world is no exception. While there are multiple accepted religions, they all conform to the Imperial Creed. Any domestic figures of religious mythology are considered to be Saints subservient to the God-Emperor on Holy Terra. And whether Holy Terra is an actual physical place or a higher spiritual domain has been a subject of heated debate and occasional religious wars.

There is also central authority. And it is a strong one. Imperial Governor with his Administratum staff and army of Adeptus Arbites resides in the Governor’s Palace on the world’s moon. The palace is a city-sized complex of offices, barracks, maufactoriums and warehouses. From there the Governor observes the world and ensures that Imperial laws are followed. All nations are subject to Imperial tithe. All religions must conform to the creed. Should any nation step out of the line, they will first receive a stern warning, and if it is not followed, orbital bombardment will commence, followed by the landing of Arbites to collect amy surviving members of the recalcitrant government.

But as long as the rules are followed, the Governor has a hands-off policy to ruling. The nations are allowed their autonomy. They can select their own governments, handle their own affairs and mutual relations, and even war with each other. The Governor will only interfere in wars if the Imperial tithe is threatened or there is excessive use of weapons of mass destruction.

Therefore, to most people the Governor is a distant figure that has little direct influence in their lives. Everyone knows that the world belongs to a larger Imperium and that out in the stars there are many more worlds. But the homeworld has little contact with any of that. It is remote, at the end of an obscure chartist route, and rarely has visitors. When it does, those visitors only visit the orbital docks around the moon. Moon is where the rarely occurring psykers are sent, to be either trained to harness their powers or loaded to the regularly visiting Black Ships. Moon is where the chartist captains stop to trade, and their off-world products rarely make their way to the surface. The world is almost completely self-sufficient.

But self-sufficiency is not enough. Every Imperial World is expected to contribute with a tithe. And the world has little to offer. It has mineral resources and manufacture, but only just enough for its own needs. It has agriculture, but not enough for surplus production. So what form does the world’s tithe take.

Imperial Guard regiments. Every world is expected to send soldiers for the guard, but this one does so in numbers, quality and regularity exceeding the usual, combining its tithe requirement with the troop requirement.

While many regions of the world have experienced peace for generations, there is never a time when there wouldn’t be a conflict happening somewhere. Individual nations or entire coalitions occasionally war against each other for religious, nationalistic or economical reasons. In addition to that, various armed groups cause threats that cross national borders, sometimes threatening to destabilize entire regions, forcing the intervention by a multinational task force. In that fashion, even troops from countries that are at peace may enter conflict when their nations seek to ensure continued stability by participating in peacekeeping operations abroad.

The constant conflicts are seen as a desirable feature by the Imperial Governor, and that is a major reason for the Governor’s distant rule. The conflicts force every nation to maintain a standing army and military readiness, and they provide battlefield experience to the troops.

And when the time to collect the tithe comes, every nation is expected to provide the best of its young soldiers as recruits for a new Imperial Guard regiment. With the added demand that every recruit must be a volunteer. Because that is the world’s tithe. Well equipped, highly trained and highly motivated Imperial Guard regiments for the meatgrinder of Imperium’s wars offworld.

There are many incentives to volunteer. Both the Governor and individual nations offer various perks and privileges for the families of accepted volunteers. Depending on where they are from, this can mean better housing and rations, stipends at prestigious centers of education, or desirable work opportunities. To be accepted into the Imperial Guard is also seen as a great honor and accomplishment, something for the family to be proud of. Military training also emphasizes that while serving your nation is important, truly important service happens in the Imperial Guard, which is only for the best of the best, and aiming to be good enough for that is what every soldier should strive for.

There is also massive propaganda. The remote world has never been the target of a Xenos raid or Chaos incursion. Schools teach that the reason for that lies in the stalwart efforts of the homeworld regiments fighting in distant worlds to ensure that the war remains out there and the distant horrors never set foot on the soil of the homeworld. Numerous public entertainment vids depict the heroism of Imperial Guard and feature either glorious battles at exotic locations or desperate struggles in literal hellscapes.

Without exception, there are always more volunteers than there are places in a newly founded regiment, and the world has never had a problem with filling its quota.

The individual reasons to volunteer may wary. Someone with a not very well off background may do so for the knowledge that his family will be better off and perhaps even thrive because of it. Someone may see it as an accomplishment, to be one of the best. Someone wants to keep the homeworld safe from offworld menaces. Someone wants to see what lies beyond their world, in the rest of the galaxy, and Imperial Guard is for the vast majority the only way to get to travel the stars.

I haven’t fleshed out the homeworld further than that, because my idea is that we name and create it together, using the regiment creation rules of Only War. What shape the regiment takes will also influence what direction the game will take. A heavy armor regiment will see very different missions than a drop trooper regiment.

I am also open to suggestions as to where the regiment will be sent. There are plenty of opportunities in the official books. Jericho Reach. Spinward Front from Only War. Something entirely unique and GM-created. I do have some plans about what the regiment might experience and what the overarching plot might be, but they can easily be adjusted to different fronts and opponents. There is also the option that the regiment will not be assigned to any particular front or crusade. They could be requisitioned and placed under the command of a Roque Trader. It would remove a bit of the strategic aspect and sense of ongoing war, but would allow for a bit more variety and flexibility – and uncertainty – in the missions the regiment would undertake. It would also mean that much of the downtime will happen in the barracks complement of a voidship. With a Roque Trader as an overall commander, the regiment would in all likelihood face much more individual missions not connected to each other rather than an ongoing military campaign. Boarding actions. Dethroning a seditious planetary governor (and confiscating his personal assets). Claiming a new world for the Imperium by defeating the natives or xenos already there. And so on.

In fact, I am thinking of giving the players some choice in where the regiment will be sent and what enemies they will face. The regular guardspeople have little choice in that, of course, so I am thinking of having pre-mission interludes where the players get to play as members of the Crusade’s command staff or Roque Trader bridge crew. Aides and advisors to the Warmaster or Roque Trader. Imperial Tacticians, Astropaths, high ranking officers and such. They have data of the bigger picture the Crusade is facing and can debate and decide where the regiment gets deployed. That would mean a secondary group of characters that do not need to be statted out.

As for characters, every option is available. A world like the one in question would not have an abhuman population, but if someone has a great character idea about a Ratling or an Ogryn, I am not forbidding them. Any unusual characters could be from the world’s moon, having lived there in Governor’s service. Such characters would still be influenced by the world’s culture. And since the new regiment would spend some time on the moon for final training in Imperial equipment and tactics before getting shipped offworld, the characters would have had time to meet and get accustomed to each other.

===Final premise===

After discussion in the development thread, this is the campaign background:

The regiment’s homeworld is a long lost human world recently brought back into fold. Not through conquest but peacefully, through successful diplomacy and missionary work. The world’s peaceful conversion has made it something of a PR piece for the Imperial Administration, and now that the world is ready to send its very first regiment to the Imperial Guard, the regiment will be accompanied by some unusual camp followers. A propaganda movie crew that is going to film their heroism and sacrifice for publication and posterity.

To make sure that there will be opportunity for both heroism and sacrifice, the regiment will be sent to join the currently hard-pressed Achilus Crusade in Jericho Reach.

The movie crew will have some influence on the regiment’s assignments through their liaison with the Crusade high command, who understands both the strategic situation and the value of good propaganda. All the players will have a secondary, unstatted character as one of the movie crew, and they have some choise about the regiment’s missions through talks with the liaison.

==Homeworld==

Cale’s World

Ten thousand years ago, an orkish fleet attacked and destroyed a convoy of supplies and workers headed towards an Agri-World. A group of escape transports was caught in the backwash of a fleeing ship’s Warp-Drive and tumbled into the Warp. They emerged unscathed and crash-landed on a pristine, uninhabited planet in an uncharted sector of space. The inhabitants of the escape transports were unmodified, unmutated, stock humans. They had no tech-priests, no commissars, not even electricity. They only had what crude metal tools they could fashion from the wreckage of their ships.

Ten thousand years is enough time to build a civilization that’s about as close as you get to our Earth without breaking copyright. Two generations ago, when Cale’s World developed radio and began broadcasting their presence to the galaxy, the Imperium heard. They came. And they found a planet of billions – billions of genetically pristine humans and untold natural wealth ready to be exploited.

And so they came not as conquerors, but as liberators. They came as a father who did not even know that he’d lost a son. They brought pomp and ceremony, ancient relics, displays of power and wonder. They brought the Omnissiah and the Space Marine Chapters.

And once the population had embraced their long-lost progenitors, there was only one last thing to bring.

They brought war.

Billions of humans. Billions of potential soldiers. A hundred years isn’t long enough to train a population in the finer points of warfare, but it’s more than long enough to build recruiting stations and set up a few factoriums to turn out standard-issue military equipment. Enough time to build a few very specialized training facilities on the planet’s only moon. And so the sons of Cale’s World have begun to explore the galaxy. Just… not in the way their grandfathers imagined.

==Regiment==

===Background===

1st Cale's World Rifle Regiment officially known as 1st Calean Rifles colloquially or "The Big Green One"

* Homeworld: Imperial
* Commander: Maverick
* Regiment Type: Line Infantry
* Training Doctrine: Die Hards
* Training Doctrine: Sharpshooters
* Drawback: Cloud of Suspicion (The "untimely inquiries" takes the form of the propaganda officers taking an unhealthy interest in what the Guards are doing.)

The Cale's World 1st Rifle Regiment is, as the name implies, the first regiment to complete its training and leave to find its destiny in the stars. Cale's World has already become something of a PR coup for the Imperium; its discovery and subsequent peaceful conversion to the Imperial Creed over the last hundred years has been the subject of many propaganda pieces. But the work has only begun. And so when the 1st Rifles left home, they brought along some unusual companions.

The Cale's World 1st Rifles are destined to become the new face of the Imperial propaganda machine. And so their regiment has makeup artists, writers, cameramen, PR officers, and all other manners of hangers-on whose job is to get just the right shots at just the right time. But the best shots are action shots! And so the 1st Rifles always find themselves where the fighting is the thickest, where the odds are the most stacked against them, and where the chances of survival are slimmest. It doesn't matter if they die, so long as they die on camera. Heroism can be added in post. Each of the Guards has already given interviews for battles they haven't fought yet, just in case they die too soon and they want to use their faces for a while longer before turning them into heroic martyrs.

===Composition===

The regiment, led by the colonel, is composed of infantry companies.

Each company is led by a captain. Captains and lower ranking officers generally share the colonel’s leadership style. (They can all be considered Mavericks.)

Each company has 5 infantry platoons, one heavy weapons platoon, and the company HQ. The total strength of a company is as follows:
* 1 captain
* 1 commissar
* 7 lieutenants
* 29 sergeants
* 6 priests
* 6 tech priests
* 292 other ranks (including a medical section of a surgeon and 5 orderlies)

342 total

So while regiments can vary in troop strength depending on how many companies they are composed of, with the largest often having a rank between the colonel and captain to manage multiple companies, each company is of manageable size and capable of autonomous operation if necessary.

Company command section usually includes the following:
* captain
* adjutant
* signalstrooper
* senior sergeant
* standard bearer
* forward observer
* vox operator

A commissar usually, but not always, accompanies the command section.

The heavy weapons platoon includes a command section, a mortar squad, an anti-tank squad and a fire support squad.

Infantry platoons have a command section and 5 infantry squads. The command section has a following composition:
* 1 lieutenant
* 1 vox operator
* 1 medic
* 1 gunner
* 1 assistant
* 1 missile launcher

And the infantry squads have the following composition:
* 1 sergeant
* 1 vox operator
* 1 special weapon
* 1 sniper
* 6 other guards

===Standard kit===
* 1 uniform, 
* 1 set of poor weather gear
* a rucksack
* 1 set of basic tools
* 1 mess ket
* 1 canteen
* 1 blanket
* 1 sleep bag
* 1 rechargable lamp pack
* 1 grooming kit
* 1 set of cognomen tags
* 1 instructional handbook (Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer)
* 1 Munitorum Manual
* 2 weeks rations

* Main weapon: M36 Lasgun and four charge packs
* Sidearm: Accatran-Pattern MKII Heavy Laspistol and two charge packs
* Melee weapon: Knife
* Grenades: two frag and two krak
* Armor: Best-quality storm trooper carapace armor (7 points protection in all locations)
* Favored Basic Weapon: Plasma Gun
* Favored Heavy Weapon:

==Player Characters==

[[The_Volunteers:PlayerCharacters|Descriptions, Backgrounds and Character Sheets of PCs]]

==Film Crew==

The brave guards of 1st Calean Rifles are accompanied by a film crew recording their heroism and sacrifice. The film is naturally going to be a carefully edited and thinly veiled propaganda movie and Imperial Guard recruitment ad. But the high command knows the value of good propaganda, so the film crew gets to attend General Grayhammer's strategy briefings and make suggestions regarding the regiment's deployment. (And the players who get to play the film crew during the briefings will have some choice in the missions they will face.)

===Producer - Marcus Burns===

The man who brought you, Space Marine Survivor, and Inquisition Tank. Marcus has a history of making the heros relatable to the common person. Now starting his most ambitious project yet. The Regiment, and turning common Guardsmen into Heros. A lad, raised by his parents who worked in a Scout Walker factory, he joined a drop regiment when he became an adult. After a high casuality battle against the Necrons, Burns was found to no longer drop capable with both legs being replaced with cybernetics and found himself bouncing around various administrative positions until he found himself in the propaganda department where his ability to relate to the common man was prized. Most of his projects have been in explaining how the higher levels of the imperium serve the common man and now he is ready to represent the common man doing their part.

===Cassandra 'Cass' Yates===

Art Supervisor/Production Assistant/Director's Assistant.

Uptight, artistic, eye for detail. She is there to make a difference, this is her holy grail, a way to make a name for herself.
She would die for her art (and probably is first to go XD ).

One word: perfectionist.

She is not the director, but she wants to BE the director, she puts her hands on everyone's business.

Why perfectionist? Try put a perfectionist in the chaos of war, you get interesting things.

==Non Player Characters==

===The High Command===

====Lieutenant General Grayhammer====

General Grayhammer is the regiment’s liaison with the Crusade High Command. She is a woman whose physical age is difficult to determine. Her skin is smooth, taut and without wrinkles and her hair is pure white and cut short in a military fashion. Considering her position in the High Command, her age is likely to be in the three digits though. At her rank, rejuvenant treatments come with the position. Why promote someone to such a high rank and then allow her to become senile or withered by age in a few decades, which would probably not be enough to even see the end of her first campaign.

The General’s only visible battle injury is her left arm. It is of high quality cybernetics and has an eye-like lens on the palm.

General Grayhammer is not only a shrewd strategist, she understands the value of good propaganda, and has even written a manual on psychological warfare. Therefore she makes a near perfect liaison. She understands both the needs of the movie crew and those of a crusade.

Ordinary Guards are unlikely to see the General outside a propaganda poster or video clip. The regiment’s Colonel and the movie grew get to meet her during strategy sessions, but she is far too busy to make personal inspections of individual regiments, even in the case of 1st Calean Rifles. So if there is a need to have a high-ranking officer to be present during an inspection, parade, or award ceremony, the movie crew will film the regiment separately and add the General later as a green screen effect.

====Colonel Julius Copperfield====

Colonel Julius is a flamboyant commander who tries to make sure he is the center of attention at all times. With this tendency he was a shoe-in for the propaganda viewpoint. The most charismatic person on the field, he knows he always attracts attention so he has a history of making sure he is at the focal point and using the enemies fixation on him to his advantage. Routinely Colonel Julius be in the front lines and use the attention on him to send a flanking force against an enemy. A common order for his men is to have 2 battalions take the space and equipment of 3 on the battle in order to have a third battalion in secret ready for a flanking maneuver. There is a consistent rumor that he has asked regular line units to be trained for drops but that can neither be confirmed or denied. After all it would be crazy to have a line unit act like a drop unit right? Ummmmm Right?

Colonel Julius has been extremely lucky and good and has yet to have permanent battle injuries. His boyish charm is perfect for the camera and he outwits his enemies with a running commentary.

Ordinary Guards will probably only interact with the colonel on a night before the battle or if they are the lucky souls who the colonel wants the attack to fixate on. For good or for bad, he will be right there next to them. Screaming orders so the enemy knows exactly where he is.

====Prefectus Scullo====

Administratum officer from the division of Historical Revision Unit, Prefectus Scullo is the man who authorized the sending of film crew along with 1st Calean Rifles.

Scullo is a withered husk of a man with no family and nothing in his life besides his office that he has held for decades. This is because all his life he has been sparing his wages like a miser in order to eventually afford rejuvenant treatments. Even so, he could only afford the cheapest, low quality variety, so while he has lived well into his second hundred, he shows every sign of it and has increasingly had to rely on augmetics to supplement his treatments. Even so, his advanced age has started to affect his ability to do his work. This has made Scullo increasingly paranoid that a younger subordinate will scheme his way to replacing Scullo. Which would be a death sentence for the Prefectus who could no longer afford the expensive treatments to extend his life should he lose his office.

It is no surprise then that Scullo does not want his underlings to be too ambitious or capable, and may go as far as to subtly remove anyone he sees as a contender for his position.

====Prefectus Casimir====

An officer of Officio Tactica branch of Departmento Munitorum, Prefectus Casimir is an unhappy man in an unenviable position of being in charge of the logistics of the Achilus Crusade. With the recent setbacks causing loss of local supply sources while increasing demand for supplies and reinforcements, the Crusade has become increasingly reliant on shipments from the Imperium, but that line of logistics is long and slow to respond. Securing additional supplies is a constant problem for the overworked Prefectus.

====Lord Militant Solomon Tetrarchus====

Lord Militant Achilus did not live to see the end of the crusade he started. His successor and the overall commander in chief of the crusade is now trying to reverse the momentum of the crusade that has either stalled or forced into retreat on all fronts, and resume the advance into the reach.

====Lord Commander Gothicus====

Supreme military commander of '''Imperial Salient Acheros'''.

The Acheros Salient was launched towards the centre of the Jericho Reach, there to give battle to the degenerate warp-worshippers and their foul allies, and retake the core worlds of what was once the Jericho Sector. The resistance they have met has been unexpectedly high, particularly in the haunted Cellebos Warzone, and casualties incurred by the Imperial forces have been massive, blocking the salient’s progress into a bloody war of attrition.

====Lord Commander Ebongrave====

Supreme military commander of '''Imperial Salient Canis'''.

The Canis Salient was launched against the Tau controlled domains of the Velk’han Sept in the Black Reef area of the Jericho Reach, reinforcing armies already fighting against the highly organised and sophisticated alien forces across the so-called Greyhell Front previously dispatched by Lord Militant Achilus. The fighting has been particularly bitter. Lord Commander Ebongrave, the Imperial Salient Commander, has gained a swift reputation for barbarous and unorthodox tactics.

====Lord Commander Coldsmith====

Supreme military commander of '''Imperial Salient Orpheus'''.

The Orpheus Salient was launched to reclaim worlds lying along the rimward portion of the Reach. Here, progress was initially relatively rapid and successful, with scores of worlds returned to Imperial control. All that changed with the arrival of Tyranid Hive Fleet Dagon, currently considered to be the greatest single extant threat to the crusade, and indeed the lives of every living being in the Jericho Reach. In the initial Tyranid assault, numerous worlds were lost and an entire Imperial Navy Battlegroup was lost, presenting a severe blow to the crusade forces. Desperate efforts are underway to stall or at least slow the Tyranid advance in order to buy time to bring in sufficient reinforcements to keep the entire Orpheus Salient from collapsing.

====Lord General Pauelus====

A commander of the Crusade Reserves, Lord General Pauelus is in command of the recent reinforcements like the 1st Calean Rifles.

====Lord General Agis====

A recent reinforcement to the Crusade High Command, arriving with the same wave of reinforcements as the 1st Calean Rifles. Lord General Agis is an Imperial Tactician with an advisory position in the High Command. A veteran of many desperate wars, he was sent to the Jericho Reach with the hope that his experience and insights would help the hard-pressed Crusade recover from its setbacks.

===The Line Troops===

====Captain Benedict van der Stelt====

"We are the best there is, and it is time to let the galaxy know it."

An intense, wiry man, Captain van der Stelt has high exceptations of both himself and his troops. He is determined not only to succeed but to excel in the coming assigments, and show the rest of the Imperial Guard, the rest of the Imperium, and the rest of the galaxy what the Caleans can accomplish.

He is the first to volunteeer his company for ''anything''.

And he is not much for motivational speeches. He assumes that example alone will suffice to make his troops just as driven to succeed as he is.

====Lieutenant Mercedes "No Mercy" Nocturne====

A fit woman with her blonde hair in a bun, the fact that she hails from her home nation's navy rather than ground forces has made some troopers concerned. But Lieutenant Nocturne has shown herself to be a capable commander no stranger to infantry warfare.

Somewhat easygoing as an officer, Lieutenant Nocturne prefers not to micromanage and usually lets her platoon handle things as they see fit, as long as everything important gets done to her satisfaction. But that is out of combat. There is nothing easygoing about her when fighting starts. Then she is all fire and steel and expects her commands to be obeyed without failure or hesitation.

====Sergeant Aric Sjurssen====

The youthful-looking Sergeant Sjurssen is not much different from the other troopers. Not bigger or stronger than the others. Not more charismatic or stronger of will than the others. Not more accurate or better in a fight than the others. No, the reason that he got the sergeant's stripes is that besides the Storm Trooper, he is the only one who has studied the Tactica Imperialis.

Keenly aware of the fact that he got his position just because he happened to read about Imperial tactics, Sergeant Sjurssen is careful in his role. He obeys his superiors without a second thought, assuming that they have a better grasp of the tactical situation. He focuses on keeping the squad together and - unless his tactical opinion is asked - lets his squad accomplish the objectives in any way they see fit, assuming that they know how to use their specialist skills better than he does.

===="Obscene" Octavia Loret, Vox Operator====

One of the physically smallest people in the company and definitely smallest in the platoon, the dark skinned and darker haired trooper Loret seems like an odd person to carry the backpack-sized vox unit until you learn that she was in her home nation's electronic warfare unit. Besides, she is extremely tenacious and carries her vox unit without complaining or lagging behind. Although the fact that she is sometimes out of breath to the point that she is almost panting when the time comes to stop and make contact is what gave Obscene Octavia her nickname. During the final training, when she had just panted her report to the company command after a rapid advance through difficult terrain, after ending the vox contact she made her immortal comment: "I was so out of breath that I felt like I was making an obscene call!"

==Campaign Journal==

Battles that the regiment has taken part in.

To be developed