Franc and the Age of Strife.
The nation of Franc suffered heavily during the Age of Strife, reduced to a single Hive city and a great hinterland of small villages and smaller city states that functioned as extensions of Pars, but it still is a proud nation that possesses a large arsenal of Dark Age war machines, and unique for the region, domestic production of low yield fission and fusion ordnances.
Franc as a nation did not descend back into the feudalism of warlordry and managed to maintain a mostly-functional parliamentary legislature. The nobles and highborn of surrounding states made inroads into Franc politics, resulting in a consistent back and forth as aristocratic and republican forces regularly clashed for control over the state.
When the armies of the Emperor swept north from Gyptus across the mediterranean salt flats, they made their way up the Balkx, absorbing the techno-clans of the mountains and absorbing the Anatoli peoples into his army. Blocked by the Caucasian wastes, and not yet willing to tackle Ursh, the Emperor cut through Europa, conquering the Jermani wastes on the way to the Nordyc where he destroyed the Maulland Sen Confederacy.
This long and unexplained detour allowed the Franc to prepare for the war, fortifying the old borders with intricate trench networks, bunkers, fortresses, expanding the army through mass-mobilization, hiring mercenaries, and preparing stockpiles of low-yield battlefield atomics to counter the Thunder Warriors.
During the great battles of the Emperor's conquest of Franc, its ancient regiments threw themselves against the Thunder Warriors with all the technological prowess it could muster, breaking out its stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in a brutal ten year war that saw the borderlands between Franc and the Jermanic wastes turned into a blasted irradiated hell. The Emperor's advance on Franc was delayed until a second army, fresh off the conquest of the Nordafrik Enclaves, crossed the salt flat and attacked Franc on a second front.
The most potent weapons fielded by Franc during the war were its large nuclear and chemical arsenal, which it used with brutal efficiency against the invaders. Although it is not discussed in polite company, the Franc army was able to kill a number of the Adeptus Custodes and their accompanying Thunder Warrior Legion and mortal soldiery by ambushing the Custodes with shoulder-mounted atomic rockets, hitting the Thunder Warriors with Phosphex shells, and deploying nerve gas against the mortal troops, followed by a bayonet charge from grenadiers in rad suits.
The conflict took nearly a decade, with Franc finally being forced to the negotiating table and offering its formal surrender. Its resistance and the fact the war took place early in the Unification Wars, gave it the opportunity to negotiate a favourable surrender to the Imperium. The Emperor had need of their armies and atomic stockpiles for the invasion of Albia and the push on the Mid-Atlantik hives, and was content to take them intact. It was, however, required to join the other nations of Europe in giving a large tithe of noble youth to the Legionnes Astartes.
Your name is
[] [NAME] Write in a name.
[][SEX] Male
[][SEX] Female
What motivates your military service?
(choose one)
[] [UPBRINGING] From the gutter:
You lived in the depths of Pars Hive, so deep that you actually touched the bare ground of Terra once. The only reason your father did not smother you was because your mother killed him and sold his body to the bio-merchants. Regularly unemployed, she had to sell herself in order to provide for you. You killed your first man when you were eleven. After a life of petty crime, you were finally arrested after killing your mother's pimp. Faced with a penal sentence or military service, you chose the army.
Dirty fighter.
You fight with the speed, skill, and ruthlessness of a hive ganger. It is clear to observers you have not had a day of formal combat schooling in your life before joining.
Equipment.
Instead of a graceful blade expected of Solar Auxilia officers, you have a relic power dagger you took from your mother's pimp, and being unable to afford a service pistol, you instead use a rifle like your fellow soldiers.
Your low social ranking means there are few expectations for you, but fewer opportunities for a leg up at the start. You are in the great crusade for money and power.
[] [UPBRINGING] Ambitious Nouveau Rich:
Your family is rich. Incredibly for commoners. A non-aristocratic family that managed to corner the arms market through the creation of reliable but unornamented weaponry for the Gendarmerie. Your family has little true political power and lacks legitimacy and prestige due to being nouveau riche, and therefore seeks land and titles. Your family instead has been training its scions and putting them into the army in the hopes they will be granted land and titles upon foreign worlds, and finally make the family official aristocracy.
Unfortunately for you, there was only one regiment available which didn't have someone of your family as part of it.
Mercantile ambitions:
You are in semi-reliable contact with your family regarding trade opportunities on newly compliant worlds, and you share their interest in attaining a position of nobility on a newly conquered world. If you earn the right to field retainers and lifeward, you can leverage your family's wealth to equip them.
Equipment:
You start with a Saturnyne Volkite pistol that is worth more than the average village in Franc, a very ostentatious and blatant show of wealth, and a duelling sword you trained to use as part of a 'patrician' education.
[] [UPBRINGING] Child of the Republican Legislature:
Your family was nominally part of the political opposition and had been one of the political parties voting in favor of joining the Imperium when the offer was laid before the legislature. As the war wound down and it became clear that Franc could make the Imperium bleed, your family's party won the election on a pro-peace platform. They opened negotiations with the Emperor and carved out additional rights, liberties, and exceptions from Imperial Law for the people of Franc, maintaining its own technological base, limited Arbites involvement, and a light tithe to the Administratum, in exchange for handing over Dark Age weapons stockpiles and joining the war for Unity by aiding the assault on Albia.
However, due to still being seen by some as being the ones to give away Franc's liberty, you were blackballed from more prestigious military positions by the Old Guard of the Franc military.
Republican Idealist:
While the journey there will be long and hard, and a great deal of toil and pain will be required to get there, you genuinely believe the Emperor when he claims that one day, the Imperium's rulers will be elected in free and fair elections, and the time of indentured labour and serfdom will be abolished. You have grand plans for the world that you are certain you'll earn.
Political connections:
Your family are involved in Terran politics and should be willing to aid your advancement through the military.
Duelling training:
A fine power sword and a parrying dagger are the weapons you have been trained to use to settle matters of honour, although the dagger is replaced with a laspistol when going into a fight.
[] [UPBRINGING] Highborn:
Your ancestors are nobles from a lineage that has fallen in steep decline following a failed coup against the Republic in the years before Unity. With little hopes of advancement within your own nation, you decided to join the military. However, your lineage still haunts you, and the only regiment that was open to you, was a low-status Chemical Warfare Cohort. With no better option, it is what you picked.
Lifeward.
As a noble, you're allowed a personal retainer to accompany you on the battlefield. It is also the only one your house can afford.
Murderous rivalries.
A rival noble family has a scion as a part of the regiment, one who will stop at nothing short of blatantly breaking the Lex Imperialis, to see your ambitions stopped.
Equipment:
You have a fine duelling sword and an ornamented laspistol as your weapons of choice.
The Space Marines: To say the Space Marines are an influential force on Terra is an understatement, nearly everywhere on the homeworld the recruiters of the Marines are a feared or anticipated sight, taking the youth of the world and elevating them to the finest warriors of the Emperor.
The People of Old Europa have a unique connection with the Adeptus Astartes. Your ancestors nearly all resisted the Emperor, and as punishment, its nobles and politicians had to surrender their healthy male children to the Astartes of the Third Legion. Over time, this has become a ritual, with the firstborn of each noble family being sent to this Legion.
Although this does not mean the lower-ranking members of society are ignored as sources of recruits. Instead the recruiters of the Imperial Biotechnica Division regularly search out potential aspirants, however due to the terms of Franc's surrender to the Imperium, they have to offer a payment before taking the children, although take them they will.
This is an optional choice:
[] [ASTARTES] Kin among the Astartes:
Your brother was taken by the Space Marines for induction and successfully passed his trials to become a Space Marine. Although due to the hypno-indoctrination involved with Astartes creation, it is unlikely that he would ever recognize you were you to meet again. Your bloodline has been marked by the Legions as compatible with marine recruitment.
Pros: Your bloodline is tracked for marine recruitment.
Cons: Your bloodline is tracked for marine recruitment.
History of the 7th Verdyn Chemical Engineers Cohort of the Solar Auxilia:
Terra as a whole is preparing countless regiments for interstellar war, each of the states sworn to Unity instructed by Imperial Decree to provide its soldiers for the leap into the void, either by supplying their own regiments, specifically armoured regiments, or offering troops for retraining by Saturnyne Ordos instructors along the new Solar-Pattern.
Franc has always maintained a large standing army through the Age of Strife and as part of accepting the Emperor's Unity, these troops had to be given up for the Great Crusade. Millions of soldiers from a myriad of regiments either setting out with their traditional equipment, or going through retraining programmes. And all of them are required for the struggle to come.
The regiment that you joined was the 7th Verdyn Chemical Engineers, a regiment of Frankian combat engineers based in the bastion they are named after, whose experience with using rad suits and hazardous environment gear ensured that when the nascent Imperial Administratum took a census of Franc's armies, they were chosen for retraining into Auxilia.
Originating from a border region of Franc, the Bastion of Verdyn was, going by the scant remaining historical records, constructed before Old Night as part of the Iron War. The bastion was thereafter used primarily to stop Techno-Barbarians incursions.
The proudest relic of the Verdynis a brazier holding a fire lit from an eternal flame that predates all existing records, sourced from a pre-First Atomic War shrine, supposedly relocated on the eve of the global thermonuclear exchange that marked the beginning of the Age of Strife. It was guarded by a hereditary line of warriors whom had kept up their charge through the turbulent history of their state, serving kings, presidents, emperors, and warlords.
During the fighting, Geno-Mercenaries from the Atlantik Hives went renegade and endangered the shrine, their bodies twisting and reshaping themselves as they screamed in a language that defied understanding. As part of their duty of protecting the shrine, its guards opened fire upon their Geno-Mercenary allies.
This act drew the attention of a group of Custodians participating in the battle, their steel semi-powered armour and unadorned Auramite helmets glinting in the sun. The Shrine negotiated a surrender to the Custodes in exchange for aid in keeping their charge safe, which was granted, and one of the Custodes joined the protection detail.
In recognition of their defence of humanity's cultural heritage, after the war the shrine was outfitted with Void Shields, an emergency Stasis field, and its defenders rejuvenated and geno-augmented. It is customary among many Franc soldiers that, before they set out, they take their oath of duty in this shrine, promising to uphold the military strength and valour of their people.
Although this story is a point of great pride among the Verdynites, that is little comfort for those given the very much 'dishonourable' role of deploying chemical and radiological weaponry. While the leaders of the Auxilia regiment are undeniably skilled at their craft, having learned it in the Wars of Unity, the bulk of the officer corps consists of those who can not find a better assignment. Many of them are young, descended from families out of favor with the Imperium. Meanwhile the rank and file, although strictly trained and well drilled, are still predominantly lower ranking members of society, with a great many recruited from Franc's prisons.
How did you become an officer of the 7th Verdyn?
(choose one)
[] [OFFICER] You were Groomed for Command:
You were chosen to become an officer due to your excellent entrance exam scores. You learned at one of the ancient military academies of Franc and passed with flying colours.
The average members of the rank and file think you're a bit of a fop.
[] [OFFICER] Rose from the common soldiery:
You were just a regular trooper patrolling the Atlantic waste, when you were suddenly attacked by an anti-imperial scavenger tribe. You rallied the rest of your patrol and led them out of the ambush. This feat got you taken out of the line and re-assigned to officer training.
The 'real' officers look down on you.
It is time for Character Creation!
Plan voting, with a two hour moratorium on plans.
