The Military of Paradon.
Military.
For obvious reasons the military plays a very important role in the society of Paradon. Because they have always been either caught up in a war or preparing for one the military is given a very high priority.
The armies and fleets that Paradon commands are vast and many. I will hereby create a list of various units and commanders.
Army, regular:
This is the basic army that is made up from infantry, cavalry and air units. These men and women are equipped with the standard battle armour and supported by tanks and aircraft. Armed with rifles, grenade -and rocket launchers they are a formidable fighting force that is highly motivated.
Commando’s:
These units are made up from highly specialized individuals who are trained to work closely together. These units vary in size from five to several hundred men. Their mission is often that of preparing the way for the regular army, infiltration and any other mission that needs their special skills.
Rangers:
Rangers are the personal forces commanded by Queen Elisabeth, at least in theory. The practice is that she usually leaves the use of her troops to her commanders. There are several different types of rangers however and each has his/her own specific task. To tell these rangers apart they each have a different colour but individual rangers can have more than one colour to which they belong. I will list the colours here and explain what each does.
Blue:
These are basically police officers or better peace officers. Their job is to hunt down criminals and bring them to justice. They are often highly intelligent and as they must be highly skilled in combat as they often have to bring in people who do not want to come. They are very determined to get their man and will stop at nothing to get them.
Red:
Red Rangers are strictly combat oriented. They are grouped the same way as commando’s and work the same way. They also tend the same missions but they are considered to be superior to the commando’s. The commando’s usually don’t tend to agree with this and the usually is some resentment and rivalry between these two groups. Despite this they often work together on missions and during these missions the job takes precedence over all other matters.
White:
The white rangers are judges and lawyers who make sure that criminals are punished. It is their job to make sure that the Queen’s law is carried out.
Green:
Green rangers are scouts and their job is to collect information on the enemy or potential enemies. Although they are excellent fighters their main skill is to remain unseen.
Yellow:
This is a colour that was later added and represents the navy. Queen Elisabeth has a personal fleet that contains over 20,000 capital ships about 10% of those are manned by the yellow rangers.
Black:
This last group has caused the most outcries among the neighboring states as the black rangers are assassins. The theory is that some wars can be made much less severe or even prevented by the death of certain key individuals. A black ranger can be send out to kill a statesman who is trying to cause trouble or kill a skilled general making his army less effective. For this purpose the black rangers were created and they are highly skilled and highly effective. To be targeted by a black ranger is considered to be a certain death sentence and to date no ranger has ever failed a mission.
These assassins are not mindless killing machines however but they are carefully selected and trained. Although it is possible to enrage one and send it on a killing spree it is very rare and only those that caused the rage are targeted. Black rangers are not only carefully selected for their control but they usually have a great passion for live and they hate to kill. The only reason that they kill is to prevent further loss of live and knowing that they won’t be used vainly makes them highly motivated. Although they are trained in all weapons they always kill from as little distance as possible and their main method is either knife or hand. They are trained to kill from a distance but as this also increases the chance of harming others it is never used. They always kill their targets quickly, quietly and painlessly. They are masters of disguise and great actors giving them the ability to infiltrate almost every stronghold. Their greatest skill however is to remain unseen and unnoticed and this is contributed to their equipment such as skins. Skins are suits so tight that they appear a second skin and it has the ability to make the wearer fade into the background or even invisible. While these suits certainly exist and it is part of the standard equipment it isn’t the real reason for their effectiveness. The black rangers are the only unit that is made up solely from swordmasters and the techniques that they learn are taught only to them. As swordmasters are pretty much immortal there are now several thousand black rangers but not all are in active duty. This will of course chance should the need arise.
Only the Queen and her Admirals can order her knives to kill a target. Although it will be denied a large part of the palace staff are black rangers. This means that a large number of black rangers are always in close proximity to the Queen and anyone who wishes to harm the Queen will have to face a army of assassins. As each Admiral has his/her own battle fleet there are always several black rangers assigned to each fleet. It is unknown how many are off-world at this time but it is assumed that a large number have infiltrated the other worlds. Elisabeth never made it a secret that this was the case and she also made clear that anyone who threatened her people could expect a visit from one. Dissent quickly died out after a few of the loudest protesters turned up dead. The few wars that came from this action were rather brutal, short and very one sided with Paradon’s fleets kicking major ass.
Although not happy about it they learned one important thing when dealing with Paradon: You leave us alone and we will leave you alone.
Queens Own:
This last unit is the Queens personal army and they only obey her commands. They are also the only unit that doesn’t have any swordsmasters. The reason for this was to create a unit that allowed only the very best ‘normal’ humans. In any competition between normal humans and swordmasters the swordmaster would always win and by taking them out of the equation they now had a way to prove themselves from others. For this reason the Queens Own are considered the very best and to be allowed to join them is a great honor. There are two ways to join the unit, one is to volunteer and the other is to be invited. The applicants then have to go to a brutal training which takes them to the limit and beyond. Most drop out from this training but even those that make it are not certain to get in as the final decision is made by the commanders and the trainers.
Their equipment is state of the art and made of the best quality. The Queens Own is not only known for their elite status but they are also fiercely loyal and they would gladly die for the Queen. Elisabeth on the other hand cares deeply for her people and to harm any of her troops is worthy of her wrath.
Most members of the Queens Own are Crown children. Crown children are children who are raised by the crown and are basically orphans. During the many wars it often happened that parents died leaving their children behind. If there was nobody to take care of them than they were send to the orphanage which were run by the Queen. Not only orphans are send here but also unwanted children often wind up here. Queen Elisabeth is often personally involved with these orphans and sees them as if they were her own. She makes a point of meeting them at least once during their lives and often has dinner parties with several thousand of them at once. The orphans often come to see her as their mother and are fiercely loyal to her. Over 90% of them enter the army voluntarily and for them the greatest honor is the Queens Own.
Special Units:
There are several special units that are not part of the main army. One of these i covered in my swordmaster section and are called the
Black Angels or the Angels of Death.
Another unit is the Iron Maiden and this group consists only out of women. For various reasons they do not like men very much and they tend to avoid them. They hate abusive men who rape and beat women and have a habit of killing them on the spot, slowly and painfully.
One must always keep in mind to use the correct unit for the right job. Don’t use the regular army for specialist missions or units that are unsuited for the missions. The Iron Maiden do not work together with the Black Angels the reason for this is the commander of the Angels, Slaughter. He serfs a powerful War God which isn’t only known for It’s power and destructiveness but is also known for raping women. As the Maiden’s usual reaction to this is violent, bloody and deadly it is wise to keep these two groups separated, preferably by several light years. To help solve this problem (somewhat) people sought a solution and what they tried was having the Love Gods curse Slaughter. The curse has the effect that when he rapes a woman he gives pleasure instead of pain, in fact the rougher he is the more pleasure she feels. This is by no means a perfect solution and it won’t help the victim but it has kept the two groups from each others throats (mostly).
Also when using these special units one must remember the effects. The Angels will destroy everything and kill pretty much everyone over the age of 10 so use only if you want total destruction and annihilation. The Maiden’s one the other hand are pretty much useless when fighting female dominated societies while against male dominated societies they are pretty much just as bad as the Angels.
Commanders.
The army is organized as any other and there is very little difference but there are a few. The most important one is the Admiral. There are 5 levels or stars that a Admiral can have and a person advances through the ranks based on their skill and nothing else. As each level means greater command there is always a danger that a incompetent commander is appointed a key position. For this reason people are carefully judged before promoted.
Those skilled enough will rise quickly and will soon earn their fourth star but the fifth is not easily obtained as this position gives command over all the forces that Paradon has. People who recieve the fifth star are not only gifted soldiers and commanders but they must also possess a rare Gift. This Gift is the ability to predict what a opponent is going to do. It isn’t a precognitive ability but they See the world differently, some See lines while others See colours. By reading this extra information they will be able to read where the trouble will come from and act on them before it is to late. This ability allows the Admiral to gain a upper hand on the enemy as he often loses his element of surprise and more than one enemy set up a ambush only to be ambushed himself.
However this system has it’s limitations as advancement through the ranks was impossible for those with little combat skill. A addition was added that allowed people to advance to higher ranks that they otherwise never would have gotten. Besides to normal combat rank a non-combat rank was created that allowed people to rise to higher ranks. This gave people 2 separate ranks and made it possible for a person to be both a commodore and a 3 star admiral, where the latter was the non-combat rank. A non-combat rank only applies during peaceful missions and as soon as there is a fight a higher combat ranking officer has command. Basically the non-combat rank was meant as a ego booster for people who wanted to have some more status. This way they were able to reach positions that were unobtainable before, all ranks were now possible but one. The fifth star rank is outside this system and only 5 star Admirals decide if someone is good enough for the rank. Usually these are personally trained by other Admirals. Although the Gift can be found throughout the population it is more prominent among the swordmasters. The oldest living 5 star admiral is Lucy and she is over 40,000 years old but there are many others. Curiously the Gift is most common in females (female intuition?) but a few men have been known to reach the highest rank.
Fleets.
Besides Queen Elisabeth’s personal fleet there are many more, each five star admiral has his/her own fleet which contains roughly 400 capital ships. Capitals ships range from a few hundred thousand tons to dozens of mega tons. Each fleet also carries 300,000 soldiers of which 275.000 are regular, 25,000 are commando’s and red rangers, there are several black rangers and there are 50 Queens Own with every 5 star admiral. As each admiral has his/her own preferences the composition of these fleets can vary heavily. Some admirals prefer offense and they employ massive warships designed to pound a enemy force and blast through it while others prefer defense where they can dig in. Others prefer a mix of these two styles and admirals are always selected for their skills. When a enemy must be pushed back the offensive admiral is send in but when a system needs to be defended a defensive admiral is chosen.
Each admiral is given a system which they must protect and they are made nobility by Elisabeth. In this system it is the admiral which is not only the highest ranking officer but also the highest ranking noble. This way the admiral not only gets to govern the system but also gets to organize it’s military forces.
